Saturday 20 / April / 2024
Muscat: More than three decades after he helped build Oman’s premier seat of learning, the engineer who oversaw the creation of Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) returned, as the university’s guest of honour.
In an exclusive interview with Times of Oman, Bjorn Watson, the head engineer who oversaw the construction of Sultan Qaboos University, shares some of his fondest memories of working on the project.
Bjorn, who worked for Cementation International, the British company that was contracted to build what was at that time in Oman the single largest project given to a UK contractor, was invited back to visit SQU, 32 years after he left the country.
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Could you share some of your unforgettable experiences related to your professional, personal and social life during the construction phase of SQU?
“I had a team of expatriate engineers from the UK and from the sub-continent. At its height there were as many as 40 engineers with teams on each of the areas of the project such as the infrastructure, the faculties, the student residences and the staff housing. One of the first things we had to do was to construct temporary housing for the expatriate staff and a camp for the 1,100 or so workforce.
“I have a vivid memory of constructing a kitchen where every lunchtime 4,000, chapatis would be prepared and transported by trailer to the workers on the site,” he added. “The workers were mainly Baluchi but there were a number of craftsmen from Thailand. I remember they were so concerned about their skins burning in the blazing heat that they wore balaclava helmets!”
What were some of the major challenges that the construction company and its engineering team faced during SQU’s construction?
“One of the major challenges was to produce and install concrete in extreme heat conditions. The standard specification for concrete in the UK says that concrete must not be poured in temperatures in excess of 33°C. In the summer on site we had temperatures well in excess of 40°C and in some instances as high as 50°C. The challenge was to produce the concrete in the batching plant, deliver it to site and pour it into the formwork without premature hardening or loss of strength.
“We solved this difficulty with specially formulated mix of additives and ice in the delivery trucks. When concreting the deck was sprayed with a fine mist which reduced the temperature locally by several degrees and made the task for the concreting gang a lot more pleasant. The quality of the exposed concrete on the faculty buildings is testament to the success of our concreting operations and I was very pleased to see that 35 years later it has stood the test of time.
“Another challenge that we faced turned up only when a large proportion of the staff housing and the student residences had been completed. Inexplicably we encountered cracking particularly in the walls of these buildings and when we investigated it turned out that there was a seam of montmorillonite clay crossing the site which had not been picked up in our initial site investigation. This is clay is highly expansive when wetted – so much so that it can lift walls by several centimetres.
“We immediately had to take measures to mitigate the effects of this expansion. We did this by carefully controlling the irrigation close to the buildings and where there were planting beds adjacent to the houses the soil was contained in a waterproof membrane.”
How would you correlate your experiences during the construction stage and SQU’s present status?
“When we were designing the infrastructure I employed a young Australian engineer with experience of working in desert environments. He persuaded me that despite the evident arid conditions the site would be subjected to very occasional major flooding events and that we would have to design accordingly.”
“My first task was then to persuade the directors of Cementation International that a site in the middle of the desert would be subject to flooding and that they would have to pay for the cost of flood prevention. So we designed an extensive system of gabioned and rivetted drainage channels to prevent flooding in the built-up areas. In addition we designed a weir at the head of the valley with huge precast concrete blocks shaped to control the flow.”
“The Cementation directors were extremely sceptical about the value of building such a structure in the middle of what they saw as a barren desert but with the active support of Mike Slater, the director in charge all the flood prevention measures were installed and I was very pleased to see them in place when we returned this March. I understand that there has since been extensive flooding in the Muscat area and the university was the only place which remained accessible which testifies to the importance of our flood prevention system.”
Do you think that the later stages of expansion of SQU infrastructure are in line with the original vision? Do you have any ideas or suggestions about future expansion of the University?
“When I presented the infrastructure package to the first Vice Chancellor, Sheikh Amer, he had a vision of what he wanted the university to be like. He quoted a poem by the English 19th Century poet, Rudyard Kipling, called ‘The Glory of the Garden’.
“Our England is a garden that is full of stately views, of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues, with statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by, but the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.”
“When I returned after more than 35 years I am pleased to say that my project has grown by more than six times its original size to become one of the most prestigious centres of learning in the Middle East. My visit was so short and I only saw a small part of the university so it would be invidious of me to make any suggestions for the future expansion. I can only say that the expansion that has taken place has been carried out sensitively in the spirit of the original design and so long as this principle is adhered too then Sheikh Amer’s vision will be fulfilled.
“Our time in Oman was the most memorable of my career - both from point of view the scale of the challenge and the nature of the technical demands that we encountered. As a family we look back at that time with great fondness. Fondness for the stark beauty of the country and memories of our expeditions to places like Nizwa and Wadi Shams but also fondness for the wonderful, friendly people we met.”
“We look forward to returning and seeing in more detail the remarkable transformation that the university has achieved since I first walked the barren desert of the construction site.”
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Santhosh MK, Senior Editor for the Journalism Section at Sultan Qaboos University contributed to this report
