Dr. Sawsan Eissa is a Senior Associate, a Professor of Harbour and Coastal Engineering, and the Head of Dar’s Marine Design Unit.  

Dr. Sawsan, you began your career as a civil engineer, what attracted you to marine design and engineering?

I chose engineering because I was a math kid. I loved math. I excelled in it. So an engineering major was the suitable step after high school, but it wasn’t until my senior year in college that I chose coastal and harbour engineering/marine engineering.

In senior year in my university, students choose a graduation project. I was among the top students in my class, and it was well known that top students go to projects in the fields of concrete, bridges and steel structures. Yet, I have never been someone who just goes with the flow, and I took a strong, and unusual, liking to coastal and harbour engineering/marine engineering, a course that we had only started studying in the senior year. Though I hardly knew enough about the subject then, when I learned that there was a coastal and harbour engineering/marine engineering project, I enrolled. And the rest is history.

What were the highlights on your journey to your current role as Head of Marine Design Unit?

I have a lot of highlights in my journey: The day I graduated ranked second in my class of 500. The day I presented and discussed my graduation project in coastal and port/marine engineering, and ranked first. The day I got my masters’ degree and the day I got my Ph.D.

I still remember my first day at Dar. I had just finished my masters and was working as a Teaching Assistant (TA) in my university when I was asked to join the company. I had always heard a lot about Dar, and I was so excited to join. At the time, the team only included a senior, also a woman, and a junior, myself, but we were handling a lot of work.

Another important day is the day when my senior left the company, and suddenly I got my hands full, working to substitute her, finish the work that was unfinished, and keep business going as it used to. It was only another colleague and myself at the time, and we had a very tough time putting things on track together, but we managed to do it.

As Dar’s Head of Marine Design Unit, you have pioneered a new approach to marine design by promoting digitisation and in-house modelling processes. What do these processes include? What first motivated you to make the change? And how are these new technologies and processes adding value?

The motivation started even before I joined Dar. You see, when I was in graduate school, I developed a full numerical model that could be used to calculate nearshore waves from offshore waves. It was a long and extensive process, and it took a full year to finish and calibrate the model. But once the model was finished, I could get the wave results for big areas in just a few hours. I compared this to the time and effort needed to draw refraction maps (the alternative manual process to wave modelling) and I decided that numerical models – coupled with experienced eyes to judge and interpret the results – are the solution.

So, the move to start in-house numerical modelling was very logical, needed and could not come soon enough in my opinion, but I am happy we could initiate it and will continue developing it till we reach our full potential, which will help us to provide more consultation services and attract more clients.

Another technology is the Building Information Models, which provides a three-dimensional presentation of the project as a whole showing all components together. For a port that is basically a small town, you can see buildings, roads, infrastructure, utilities, berths, breakwaters, etc., all in one three-dimensional presentation – which is a great tool for designers and contractors to deal with clashes between different project components.

This past year has been enormously challenging for design teams around the world. Yet, Dar’s marine design unit has expanded its services and registered a record number of signed contracts. As the leader of the team, how did you manage to keep everyone motivated and overcome the difficult circumstances to accomplish such growth?

Dealing with people in general is not easy. Dealing with frustrated people in a global crisis is doubly tough. Now couple this frustration with a heavy work load and very fast track projects, and you have the situation in the marine unit last year.

I had to do a lot to keep the team motivated. What helped was my knowledge of psychology, which I studied in the early 2000s and kept reading about ever since. This knowledge gave me some insights into the personality of each one of my engineers, how to deal with him/her effectively, what motivates or discourages him/her, and so on.

But what helped most started a long time ago and long before the difficult circumstances: I have always worked to forge a team that is coherent and close to each other, and to make every one of the team feel personally close to me as the Head of Unit and to his/her colleagues as well.

All this emerged when difficulties hit. The team pulled together perfectly to meet the unprecedented circumstances. Every engineer had a sense of duty towards Dar, towards the Head of Unit, and towards each other. So it is not an unusual scene in the Marine Design Unit to see one of the engineers working to help his/her colleague in a project that he/she is not assigned for, to help in finishing the tasks and meeting the deadlines, without me even knowing. And of course, beyond any awareness that there are consequences for bad performance, there are small things that can help in motivating people: a gathering after finishing a difficult submittal, appropriate praise and appreciation to those who do well, and the like.

Beyond your role at Dar, you are also a thought leader with over 20 research publications on topics such as numerical modelling of wave conditions, characteristics of waves resulting from tropical cyclones, environmental effects of water overtopping, and numerous other topics. Can you elaborate on one research project that you feel made a significant impact?

I have many research projects, but here’s one that I really like, which studied the tropical cyclones in the Arabian Sea.

Tropical cyclones are hurricanes, but the name cyclones comes from the India Meteorological Authority, as it is the authority collecting related data in the area. The Arabian Sea was always subjected to tropical cyclones, but mainly low grade, open sea (far from land) cyclones, so their effects were not very noticeable. Then, on June 6th 2007, Cyclone Gonu started away from shore, rapidly built up to reach grade 5 on SSHS (the highest grade of cyclones/hurricanes), then lowered in grade to 3 as it moved North to make a landfall (hits land) at Ras Al Hadd, Oman, where it caused significant devastation and a number of deaths and injuries. Gonu continued to move North to Ras AL Khaima, UAE, wreaking havoc everywhere.

Immediately after Gonu, stakeholders across countries in the Gulf and Arabian Sea area were very alarmed. We had clients for whom we had recently designed projects reaching out to us with all kinds of concerns. What if our project got hit by a similar cyclone? What will happen? What is the probability of the project being flooded, or subjected to enormous tsunami-like waves?

I was also alarmed, and hence came this research project which was published in 2008. I collected data from meteorological authorities that covered 993 cyclones over 15 years from 1994 to 2008, subjected them to numerical analyses using a number of numerical models, and then compared the results to actual data to check the accuracy of the models.

The result of the analyses showed that Category-5 cyclones like Gonu do not happen so frequently. In fact, the return period of Cyclone Gonu was estimated to be around 300 years, which statistically means that a cyclone of such strength will appear once every 300 years. These results were a relief, because when we do marine design we normally implement design conditions for 100- or 200-year return periods at most, as these designs are the most cost-effective and sound for a project with a normal lifetime of 100 years. My research established that Category 5 cyclones in this area have higher return periods, meaning that there is a very small possibility of them happening during the lifetime of the structures we had designed. And I was confidently able to answer our clients that the possibility that structures we had designed would be hit by a cyclone similar to Gonu during their lifetime of 100 years is at most very slim.

We still have clients who prefer to prepare for such an event, especially since weaker but still destructive cyclones like Phet (May, 31st 2010) and Mekunu (May, 25th, 2018). followed Gonu in the area. For such projects, we have the capability to provide highly-resilient designs, after advising our clients about the consequences, mainly the high capital cost needed.

And finally, looking back, how has the field of marine design and engineering changed over your career? And what is the impact of this type of service in today’s port and marine sector?

Engineering in general has changed a lot over my career. When I was in college, we still did most design calculations manually using a calculator, and plot drawings manually in pencils for draftsmen to ink them. Computer use was not widely spread, only in universities, research centres and big companies.

Now of course we have all the technology that we need to produce, finalise, and send our deliverables in just the time it takes to press the send button on an e-mail.

When it comes to marine and coastal studies, there is a lot of software in the market for study of waves, currents, sediment transport, circulation, etc. and all phenomena that affects design and construction of ports and marine works in general, so we do not need calculators anymore for these calculations, and we are able to know much more about coastal and marine phenomena than before.

There are also many new technologies in marine surveys, physical modelling, navigational simulations, mooring analysis, etc., that give us more information than what we used to have in the past and help us develop designs that are tailored to the purpose, robust, and efficient.

The world of commerce has expanded. There is more need for ports, and ports need to handle goods and traffic more efficiently.

So we now have automated terminals, which utilise integrated technology for efficient control of traffic and trade flows, to increase the port’s efficiency and capacity. Automation is also heavily involved in port operation so traffic inside ports is increasing and the design focus has shifted towards providing more efficient water ways inside and around the ports to allow for smoother navigation.

For coastal developments, there are new technologies and new types of designs emerging. These may generally have shorter life spans but they can be constructed and installed very quickly so clients are willing to try them and replace them when needed, as they are generally cheaper than conventional structures. For example, the use of floating structures to work as breakwaters for relatively calmer sea areas, the use of less durable geotubes instead of revetment, and many other examples. So, in the sector as a whole, priorities have changed from the idea of structures with long lifetimes, to structures that are cheaper, easy to install, less durable but also relatively easy to replace.

These are just two of many other examples that show how priorities in our field have changed over time.