DPWH exec Sadain elected national president of PH civil engineers
By Chito Chavez
Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Senior Undersecretary Emil K. Sadain was unanimously elected as the national president of the Philippine Institute of Civil Engineers Inc. (PICE).
In a statement released on Monday, Nov. 14, the DPWH said Sadain gained the groups nod during the recent executive session of the elected PICE national board of directors for calendar year 2023-2024 held at the SMX Convention Center in Bacolod City, Negros Occidental.
“The extensive and diverse experiences of Senior Undersecretary Sadain will surely serve and lead the PICE, one of the Philippines’ biggest professional organizations with local and international chapters, towards another fruitful leadership of maintaining organization prominence and raising the bar of civil engineering,’’ the DPWH said.
In a career spanning to more than three decades in government service, Sadain is prepared to provide the PICE with the strategic leadership he has earned from his professional experiences in leading a group or managing offices and handling sensitive assignments.
Sadain started his public service career in 1986 as senior civil engineer at the then Ministry of Public Works and Highways which is now the DPWH.
Since then, Sadain has held various positions and offices in the DPWH as a career executive before rising to the rank of undersecretary in 2016 and then appointed by President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr. as senior undersecretary on Aug. 1, 2022.
A the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Sadain headed the DPWH Task Force on Augmentation of Local and National Health Facilities which facilitated the immediate construction of much-needed health facilities nationwide specifically quarantine/isolation facilities, modular hospitals, and off-site dormitories for medical personnel and other frontliners.
He also acted as the chief implementer of Build, Build, Build (BBB) Program during the last eight months of the President Duterte’s administration, wherein he closely consulted the concerned implementing agencies to reduce the lag time from conceptualization to implementation and shorten start-up periods by compressing the timeline in the review and approval process so as to accelerate priority projects from pre-planning stage of feasibility studies to detailed engineering design (DED), procurement, civil works construction, and completion. (Chito A. Chavez)