Is It Worth Doing MTech in Water Resources?

Choosing a specialization is as important as selecting a college to pursue MTech. Water resources engineering is one of the oldest engineering branches in all the Universities. This specialization is the stem of Civil Engineering that includes the plan of new frameworks and equipment that help oversee human water resources.

What a water resources engineer does?

Water treatment facilities, underground well and normal springs are some of the spaces that Water Resource Engineers work in. The daily to daily activities of a water resources engineer involves analyzing and implementing proper, efficient and effective water treatment system.

A Water Resource Engineer should take budgetary requirements, official laws, and different variables into thought when planning these frameworks. He/She may then regulate the development and execution of these frameworks to guarantee that they are appropriately gathered. Upon finish, they may deal with the upkeep of these frameworks.

Some of the major works involved in the career of a water resources engineer are -

• Curation, screening and analysis of dataset related to catchments, rainfall, water budget, precipitation, etc.

• Developing numerical models of the hydrologic cycle using the data

• Check out the feasibility of the model keeping eye on various industry standards

• Look out for other options that fit better according to plant/industry standards

• Managing the project and program it in a better way

• Sorting out the problems, analysis of peers' work

My prime intention to write this piece is just to discuss various scopes of Water Resources Engineering across the country. Why not start the discussion with a cool video!

Which IITs and NITs have water resources specialization?

All the old IITs have this specialization in their coursework. To be particular, IIT Bombay, IIT Bhubaneswar, IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Madras, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Tirupati and IIT Ropar.

IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur and IIT Kharagpur have this specialization jointly with hydraulics, namely hydraulics and water resources engineering. This specialization exists in IIT Hyderabad, IIT Ropar and IIT Tirupati as Environmental and Water Resources engineering.

Check the cutoff of Water Resources Engineerings across the IITs

Amongst the NITs, 15 out of 31 NITs have this specialization in the coursework. The NITs are- NIT Jaipur, NIT Bhopal, NIT Agartala, NIT Calicut, NIT Hamirpur, NIT Surathkal, NIT Patna, NIT Raipur, NIT Kurukshetra, NIT Manipur, NIT Rourkela, NIT Silchar, NIR Srinagar, NIT Warangal and NIT Surat.

NIT Surathkal has this specialization jointly as Water Resources Engineering and Management. There is Water Resouces Development and Irrigation Engineering in NIT Raipur. NIT Manipur has this specialization jointly with Environmental Engineering.

Check the cutoff of Water Resources Engineerings across the NITs

Scope of Water Resources Engineering

The scope of this field is very vast starting from the Government sectors to private consultancies. If you go into a consultancy you could see many of the market-leading MNCs work for foreign clients based in the middle east. The Indian clients are very few because the water distribution system in India is primarily managed by the central government. But yeah, there are some local companies that offer the same pay range and work in a similar field as MNCs.

In terms of jobs in water resources field and the market, WSP Global is the market leader today, with water resources as the expertise. WSP is one of the world's leading professional services firms. WSP provides technical expertise and strategic advice to clients in the Transportation & Infrastructure, Property & Buildings, Environment, Industry, Resources (including Mining and Oil & Gas) and Energy sectors, as well as offering project and program delivery and advisory services.

I'll list out some of the MNCs which work in a similar field-

• Kajima

• Sacyr

• AECOM

• SNC-Lavalin

• Stantec

• Thermax India

• Siemens India – Water Technologies

• Aqua Innovative Solutions

• UEM India Pvt. Ltd

4 Important Skillsets

If you are keen to work with the market leaders you must keep eyes on the following four aspects. Along with the following four, you need to have better exposure and strong networking to track the advancement in the industry. Keeping track of modern technologies and advancement in the water resources field will definitely make you land in your dream sector.

1. Theoretical Knowledge: This is the 1st MUST. During your bachelor days, get a strong catch with subjects like environmental engineering, hydrology and irrigation and water resources engineering. Concepts like climate change, hydrological cycle, water budget, precipitation estimation, catchment, river modelling, runoff modelling systems, hydrographs will help you to a great extent.

2. Soft Skills: In the era of Free Internet, who does not ask for soft skills! The recruiters are crazy behind this, so you need to be. There are various free open source software like AutoCAD Civil 3D, HEC-RAS, HEC-HMS, PRMS, etc that will definitely help you in the particular field. The analysis and result of this software are widely accepted by clients all around the globe. Apart from these, there is some very expensive industry-standard software like Bently-StormCAD.

3. Communication Skills: This is again a MUST. If you can not express what you think, there is no worth of knowing the thing. So, work on your communication skills and give them a better shape.

4. Project Experience: Hope you all heard of the meme - Recruiters saying the freshers, "we want a candidate with a minimum of 5 years experience". This is sad and understandable at the same time. Because, the industry does not want to train a candidate for a longer duration, they want to engage you in different projects. For that, have some prior project experience(College project counts!), get an idea to deal project and get dealt with a project.

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