Working for Rijkswaterstaat

After finishing my thesis on Mixing Timescales in the Western Wadden Sea, I stayed on as a fresh MSc to work at NIOZ on Texel. My new job was to assist in the writing of the Encyclopaedia of Marine Sciences' physical chapters. When finished, I asked prof. Will de Ruijter about other job opportunities he knew of. And yes, he just received a phone call from Rijkswaterstaat, so the next week I was on a job interview, or so I thought. But no, it turned out it was just about making arrangements for a job construction via Utrecht University. Apparently, if IMOU (as IMAU was called at the time) sent you, it was OK. This is how I started at Rijkswaterstaat, and I never left.

After two years there was a vacancy on improving storm surge forecasts for the then newly built Maeslant storm surge barrier. This started a red line in my career of working on predicting tides and storm surges. A decade later, I was stationed at Rijkswaterstaat's Hydro Meteo Centre in Hoek van Holland, to develop forecasting models for safety and shipping. I supervised eight forecasters and maintained and developed the safety systems, the models, and the website. Just like the North Atlantic Oscillation, Rijkswaterstaat at the time was re-organising ("optimising") about every eight years. At some point, ICT, models and web content were centralized. When I discovered that the operational North Sea models and other tools were not well consigned to Rijkswaterstaat's Water, Traffic and Environment (WVL) department, I went for a talk in Lelystad. Two weeks later I was transferred there.

And this is what I have been doing for more than a decade now. It involves all parts of Rijkswaterstaat's so-called Consistent Operational Systems (RWsOS): forecasting models for rivers, lakes, the delta area, the North Sea as well as a system for water level management in canals and lakes. We use models from Iceland to Switzerland that produce daily forecasts for safety (storms, floods), shipping and water management. A nice impression can be viewed here. It is a great job, acting as coordinator between the forecasters/users, the developer Deltares and the ICT people at Rijkswaterstaat. There never is a dull moment, and there are plenty of opportunities to change jobs/tasks internally. Optimising shipping and water management and keeping the Netherlands safe for flooding also is a fulfilling task, and a step I never regretted.

Marc Philippart