Frank Meins

YEP period 2015 - 2017, batch 5

Young Expert at We Consult - Zambia

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First position after YEP

Managing Director at Aquaquest Ltd. Zambia

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YEP Role

I worked as a Water Resources Specialist for Aquaquest Ltd.

Aquaquest Ltd. - part of the WE Group - is a water supply consultancy active in East and Southern Africa. The company assists farmers, mining companies and housing projects without access to surface water by providing hydro-geological assessments and geophysical field surveys and by supervising borehole drilling and development.

The work I do mainly consisted of performing geohydrological surveys including desk studies and reporting as well as drilling supervising and test pumping. Part of the work involved processing the data in GIS. Aside from the operational work I was also assisting in maintaining and developing the company's IT structures.

Click here for more information about my project.

 

Skills

During my time at the university I have studied several aspects related to water management  with a focus on hydrology. I have applied this knowledge first in Indonesia where I did an internship at Labmath Indonesia developing a mathematical model for mapping water flows through canals dug through tropical peat lands. Later on I have applied the Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) on the Lake Naivasha basin in Kenya where I used ArcGIS and Matlab to process the raw data. During my time at Witteveen+Bos I worked in the field of flood safety with a primary focus on dike design.

Key words: Geohydrology, Hydrology, Water Management, Borehole construction, Geotechnical Engineering, Project Planning, Facilitation, GIS

 

Background

Nationality: Dutch
Education: Msc degree in Water Engineering and Management (2013), BSc degree in Civil Engineering (2010) both obtained at the University of Twente

 

Experience before YEP

• 2013-2014: Project Engineer at Witteveen+Bos working in the field of flood protection, the work mainly consisted of designing dikes ensuring their geostability
• 2013: Researcher at ITC for the IWRAP Project in Naivasha, Kenya. In continuation of my MSc thesis I was hired by ITC to train the local staff in Kenya on how to monitor the different key factors of the water balance such as rainfall, evapotranspiration and discharge and how to use hydrological model
• 2010: Bachelor Internship at LabMath Indonesia were I helped developing a mathematical model for modelling drainage of tropical peat land through canal systems that were constructed for transporting the tree logs as a result of deforestation. The purpose of the model  was to determine locations for constructing dams to prevent drainage of the peat lands
• 2009: Minor at ITC - Faculty of Geoinformation Science and Earth Observation of the University of Twente - on Remote sensing and GIS, including courses on ArcGIS