Abdul Manan Khalid, P.E.


 

Abdul Manan Khalid was born in Kabul in 1958; completed his elementary and secondary studies at Qarabagh High School and moved on to finish his high school at AIT (Afghanistan Institute of Technology) in the winter of 1975. Khalid entered Faculty of Engineering of the Kabul University right after finishing high school, and graduated from the Department of Civil Engineering in January of 1981.

 

His dream job was to become a professor, and while still on his last year of studies, he was given the opportunity to teach. He continued to teach at the Faculty of Engineering up to July of 1983, when he was sent on a scholarship for post graduate studies to India. It was to a well reputed and the oldest engineering university in India, the Roorkee University. Khalid finished his masters in the field of Hydrology, and was awarded university’s gold medal for his work. He also completed post graduate studies in the field of infrastructural rehabilitation at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, New York.

 

In November of 1984, he was hired by an electromechanical company, involved in the construction of power stations and power distribution systems in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where he worked for almost eight years. However he was hired as a structural engineer, but he successfully worked as construction project manager, and in his final years, as projects coordinator reporting directly to the general manager of a 1400 employee company. Khalid’s major accomplishment was establishing a civil engineering sister company, which created capacity to complete all construction and design work in house, rather than subcontracting the work.

 

After immigrating to the United States in 2001, he worked for many years on full and part time basis in real estate development. Khalid joined the ranks of civil service with the City of New York in 1999. He first worked for the Bureau of Bridges of the New York City Department of Transportation working on the rehabilitation of some of the land mark bridges, such as, Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridge. For a short period, he also worked in traffic planning and construction mitigation and control.

 

He then moved on to become an administrative engineer with New York City Housing Authority managing a portfolio of $300 million in rehabilitation projects. He managed design, in house construction management and construction management firms. He managed a staff of 41 engineers of different disciplines and numerous administrative staff.

 

Currently, he works as an administrative engineer with the New York City School Construction Authority, which has a five year capital budget of over $13 billion dollars. In his current capacity, he manages consultants involved in the design of the rehabilitation of existing, and also the design of new school buildings.

 

Over the past ten years, he has acquired valuable knowledge and experience in rehabilitation and forensics of infrastructures, particularly bridges and building envelopes.

 

Mr. Khalid lives with his wife and his eight year old son in the Queens section of New York City.