Mexico, Hydraulic Engineering, Branch B, 1992/1994

How many times in our professional life do we face the problem where we have to explain our ideas to non-educated or over-educated stakeholders? How many times have we disregarded an excellent project just because it was not presented adequately? Probably we will never know.

Understanding how to communicate with colleagues, scientists, clients, stakeholders, politicians, students and even our own friends or relatives makes the difference between a successful project, with a strong impact from the local to even broader-spectrum levels, and a project that lies on the top forgotten shelf of an office.

From the beginning of my professional career and, in particular, after my graduation as M.Sc. from IHE in 1994, I have been involved in a series of projects and situations where the ability to transmit correctly the main objectives, ideas and solutions has had a strong impact on the results. In this paper a problem is addressed that we have to face more often than we may like to acknowledge. It is exposed in a series of personal experiences where the enhancement of local knowledge and capacity depended largely on the way the information was transmitted. In the following, a description of the different attitudes we may encounter, like mistrust, pride and even corruption, as well as the role of our education on how to tackle such circumstances, is elucidated.

The relation with people not educated in our field is summarised in a series of varied stories involving the supervision of dredging works in a coastal lagoon in Mexico, the assessment of the potential for development in several fishing ports on the North Atlantic coast of Spain, and teaching post-graduate international students.

The interaction with highly-educated and/or experienced stakeholders is shown through other examples, which include the European Project HUMOR, the physical model testing of an offshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in the Adriatic Sea, and the construction of an offshore breakwater on the Pacific coast of Peru.

Last, but not least, this paper presents the challenges found in efforts at improvement of local knowledge where the site level of scientific or professional development is moderate. In this case, inertia, mistrust, and even pride, prevent the acceptance of new ideas brought by internationally educated professionals.

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