Mahab Ghodss Co is a consulting firm in water and hydrology; one of the world’s largest in this specialized filed. The Company has designed and supervised the construction of many dams and irrigation networks, as well as water treatment plants. The Company was recently granted an award on the National Quality Day. Many believe in fact that the Company is something all Iranians should be proud of. To know more about it we had an interview with its Managing Director, Mr Azizollah Babaee.

Events- When and how was Mahab Ghodss established in the first place?

Azizollah Babaee- The Company is the outcome of a merger of two companies: the 100% state-owned Water &
Electricity Engineering Services Co and Taleghani-Daftari Co which was a private consulting firm. The merger was made in the early days of the Revolution in 1983, when many companies were taken over by the state.
The idea was, at the time, that engineering design and consulting work should be in the hands of the state – as in so many other countries – unlike contracting work which should be handled by the private sector. Therefore, the new company was put under the control of the Ministry of Energy. However, in order to free it from the legal restrictions of a stateowned company, shares were transferred to the Foundation of Imam Reza (26%) and Hazrat Masoumeh Foundation (25%).

Therefore, the company is legally considered as a private sector entity and free of the formalities and restrictions that make a governmentowned company sluggish and inefficient. The two foundations have actually transferred full powers to the Ministry and do not interfere in the company’s business. All they do is to come
and collect their share of profits each year.

E- When did you join the Company?

AB- I joined the Company in 1990 as the Managing Director and remained with the Company till 1995 when I left to join Satkab Co as the Managing Director and Chairman. However, a couple of years later, the then Minister asked me to come back to this company which he thought was not in good condition. So, I returned to this company.

E- You seem to be a strong advocate of quality systems from what we have heard?

AB- During the two years I was with Satkab the Company took action, in 1997, towards ISO certification through SGS. The company received an ISO 9001: 1994 certificate in 1998 and then recently we decided to go for the ISO 9001: 2000 through BSI which is now established in Iran as a joint venture named BSI Inspectorate Iran (Qeshm) Ltd. We have now obtained the 2000 version through this firm. I should add here that soon after receiving the ISO 9001: 1994 through SGS, we began our efforts towards a Total Quality
System and to assess ourselves, we opted for the EFQM model. This was one strong point in our favor when the assessors examined our case for the first National Quality Award assessments. At present we have the Total Quality System not only at the management level but from the very top to the very bottom: top managers;
middle managers; project managers and even in the smallest units.

We lay great stress on two points: on our own people, i.e. the employees; and on our clients. Feel free to ask any of our people or our clients whether or not they are happy and satisfied with this company: I am certain all will say “yes”! We have been involved in many large projects and all the clients are satisfied with our work.

E- Such projects as…?

AB- We performed the Karkheh Dam Project - I mean we designed it and supervised its construction, of course. We only provide engineering services; we’re not contractors. There are four billion cubic meters of water behind this dam. We designed an irrigation network 320,000 hectares in area of which 40,000 is already built, 70,000 is being built in Dasht-e-Abbas (Abbas Plain) and the rest will be built in due course. There is an 8-km long tunnel transferring water from behind the dam to Abbas Plain at a rate of flow of 80 cub m/sec. There is also a channel in which the rate of flow is 90 cub m/sec. To give you an idea of these rates of flow: when Karaj River is flooded the rate of flow is 30 cub m/sec only. We have designed the world’s largest and tallest dam, the Bakhtiari Dam. When we designed Phase I of the project the client was not confident about our abilities so they took our design to be checked by a Canadian firm who approved it 100%. We also designed Karun III Dam, 205m high, which is 90% complete and has 32 km of underground tunnels and large cave-like cavities, and produces 2000 megawatts of electricity.

Karun IV, about 60 km behind Karun III, and 225m high, is presently under construction. We also work for foreign clients: we are designing a dam in Equatorial Guinea on a waterfall that will produce 100 megawatts of electricity, as a part of a 100% Iranian consortium. We design the dam, other Iranians build it.

E- By the world’s largest dam, you must mean up to now of course?

AB- No, I mean the largest ever to be built. No other location anywhere in the world allows the construction of a larger dam. And we do all this using the latest and most up-to-date standards presently being used in the USA
and the rest of the developed world.

We designed Tehran’s sewerage network and it was approved by the World Bank who financed the project. We designed the Bandar Abbas sewerage system, a most difficult project because Bandar Abbas is almost at sea level. You dig a whole at the most one meter deep and you find water; salty water of course. There is a pipeline of 2.2 meters in diameter, 350 km long, transferring water form Isfahan to Yazd. We designed it!

We are one of the largest consulting firms in water and hydrology worldwide. Right now we are working on 310 projects. No other similar company anywhere in the world can handle so many water projects simultaneously and we have completed over 900 projects by now.

In addition, we are also involved in two secondary areas as well:
1) environmental protection, and
2) land surveying and accurate behavioral studies.

Last year we produced as many maps as the State Geodesy Organization did. And we work with firms in many
other countries: Canada, France, Switzerland, China, Croatia, Serbia, Romania… The most interesting thing is
that we possess no hardware of any kind except PCs and other electronic devices. We do not even own any cars. They are all hired.

E- What do you think is the secret of your success?

AB- Undoubtedly conscientious and highly qualified employees. We recruit apprentices while they are still at university. We train them carefully and treat them well and later if they stay with us we pay them handsome salaries. This is why most of them stay with us. Sometimes we need extra human resources and we recruit them through advertising and interviews. Once, on the site of Karkheh Dam, a number of people came from a British firm to visit the workshop. When we introduced our people and their qualifications to them they were
amazed!

About 70% of our employees hold bachelor’s or higher degrees. We have a library with 20,000 books on water. We document each step we take in each and every project. We provide every and all electronic hardware and software required for our design and consultancy work.

We have an MIS (management information system) that we have designed and created ourselves, by our own Iranian employees. We have 35 systems, and 1100 employees working in the MIS which is expanding and
improving every day. We have a Protect Information System which is very useful whenever we are taking part in a tender.

Finally, we review every project from time to time and every time come up with some improvements and savings.