Rhea Albelda

Background

About Rhea Albelda

I completed my bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering in the year 2007. With overall 14years of experience, I started my career working in the Philippines for only couple of months as Civil Engineer then decided to grow my career in the Middle East. I flew to Dubai in the year 2008 and landed a job on a shoring and piling contracting company as Design Engineer. This was where I have gained experience in the design and construction of shoring works and pile foundations in the UAE. I have worked there for 18months before I joined Atkins Dubai. I joined the Geotechnical Engineering department as Graduate Geotechnical Engineer in the year 2010. During the first two years, I had mainly worked on one of the biggest projects in KSA at that time. My job was mainly focused on geotechnical investigations, interpretations including foundation assessments. I was promoted after that and started to pursue further studies on foundation and structural engineering. The dissertation that I wrote for my masteral was focused on how to optimize the pile design utilizing the results of preliminary test piles within the Region. Which was later became a team research and was successfully published in the year 2019. Worth noting that the paper has been recognised as one of the great improvements on the current pile design practices. Authority has started to acknowledge preliminary test piles to be done at the earlier stage of the design to optimise the pile capacities which will provide a more economical pile designs and have a high regard on enhancing sustainability. After completing my MSc for more than 2 years, I got promoted as Senior Geotechnical Engineer, still with Atkins Dubai. During those years, I started to lead the geotechnical discipline for most of the property projects of Atkins. This role involved management of delivery fee, resources, and all technical deliverables under the geotechnical discipline. During this time, I have managed to gain experience with regards to 3D modelling to capture the soil-structure interaction for the design of deep and complex foundation for high rise towers. With almost 10 years working in Atkins Dubai, I decided to pursue another huge step for my career growth. I joined Robert Bird Group Dubai as their Geotechnical Team Leader for MENA Region. My main role in Robert Bird Group includes technical design, geotechnical construction, project management and providing geotechnical advice and technical support for internal and external Clients