Prof. S.S. Chakraborty, who is currently Managing Director of Consulting Engineering Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, has been involved in several major infrastructure projects across the world, including transportation, housing, water resource, power and health.
Throughout his illustrious career Prof. Chakraborty has been providing guidance and ensuring coordination among multiple disciplines of infrastructure both in India and abroad. The main fields of his expertise are capital-intensive engineering projects, including involvement in the design of many long-span bridges. His expertise extends to all aspects of planning and design of road connectivity.
He has an enviable record in addressing emergency reconstruction programmes through structural engineering efforts that takes cognisance of civil society requirements. This was most visible in the Marmara Earthquake Emergency Reconstruction project in Turkey as well as in the Latur earthquake in India.
Other important aspects of his profession include promotion of public-private partnership and understanding resource mobilisation as the most critical aspect of infrastructure development, notably Nivedita Bridge in Kolkata, a BOT project which had Prof. Chakraborty as chairman of the concessionaire. His involvement was comprehensive. The bridge was given the best innovative international bridge award by the American Segmental Bridge Institute, the first time an Indian bridge has been so acclaimed.
Prof. Chakraborty was bestowed with honorary membership award by the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineers in 2007 in appreciation of his outstanding services to IABSE in several committees, in particular as its vice-president from 1997-2005 and for his eminent role in the 2005 IABSE Conference in New Delhi, where he was instrumental in getting the structural engineering community to involve itself in societal development.
Prof. Chakraborty received his Degree in Civil Engineering in 1957 from the University of Calcutta. Apart from his current tenure at Consulting Engineering Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, he is also chairman on numerous professional boards and distinguished visiting professor at Indian Institute of Technology. He has been advocating technical education in India by giving lectures at IIT, emphasising the need for real-time accommodation of technical development in the syllabi including increased practical orientation.Prof. S.S. Chakraborty is also an accomplished internationalist and a public intellectual.
