Interview with Eng. Shavindranath Fernando,
Chair, Dr. A C Visvalingam Prize Awarding Committee 2026.

In the thirteenth episode of the SLEN Podcast, Eng. Manjula Samarasinghe speaks with the Chairman of the Dr. A C Visvalingam Price Awarding Committee, Eng. Shavindranath Fernando about the Eng. (Dr.) A C Visvalingam Award.

Eng. Manjula Samarasinghe - Editor SLEN:

Good evening, Eng. Shavindranath Fernando. At the outset, we wish to sincerely appreciate your long standing service to the Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka, your leadership as a Past President of IESL, and your continued contribution to many important institutional activities, which is truly commendable. We also appreciate your present role as the Chair of the Prize Awarding Committee for the Eng. (Dr.) A. C. Visvalingam Award for the Most Outstanding Engineer 2026.

I was fortunate to attend the launch event of this prestigious award, which was held on 7 May at the auditorium of the Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka.

Thank you very much for joining us today and for kindly agreeing to share your thoughts with the IESL membership.

With your permission, I will now proceed with the questions based on the queries received from our own members.

Eng. Manjula Samarasinghe

Eng. Fernando, in your view, what are the most important qualities that the Eng. (Dr.) A. C. Visvalingam Award should recognize in an engineer, beyond technical competence and professional excellence?

In other words, should this award also reflect qualities such as leadership, integrity, social responsibility, innovation, and service to the nation?

Eng. Shavindranath Fernando :

Thank you very much, Manjula. It is nice and very pleasant task for me to be interviewed by you, another longstanding, very sincere and honest contributor to all the activities of IESL. I understand you are the Treasurer, and also the Editor of the SLEN.

It's good that you raised these issues, and I know that you were also there at certain meetings with Dr. Visvalingam, and your engagement with Dr. Visvalingam in managing the Trust fund as well. Having said that, yes, all the qualities that you mentioned, like leadership, integrity, honesty, sincerity, social responsibility, innovation, and service to the nation and more than anything else, beyond the call duty. All those things were the main pillars on which, Dr. A. C. Visvalingam based his award when he initiated it. His offer of the Award came to IESL in October 2021, and with two others, I was requested to work out the formalities of accepting the offer. We managed to work through with him for almost an year, and we were able to finally conclude all the initial documents, encompassing his vision that comprised of all what you mentioned. We finally signed the agreement with Dr. Visvalingam in October 2022. We were able to make the first award in October 2023.

So that's the background to the award.

He had two main purposes for this award. Number one, as you said, the qualities of the person who will be selected having all those attributes and the second aspect was that the formation of an engineer comprises of… according his own words, “the hard work, and the discipline that are needed to pass the academic and professional barriers” which should be appreciated by the general public. So, what does it mean? He believes by instituting this award, the IESL would be able to build “a strong profile for the Engineering Profession”. He further believed by recognizing an Outstanding Engineer who has carried out his duty with superior skill and integrity on behalf of his employer while contributing in a tangible manner to the betterment of the country and profession, he believed that a strong profile for the Engineering Profession can be built up. Those were his intention.

He always believes that an engineer should be able to think out-of-the-box. Just imagine an engineer continues to do his work, without facing any barriers. That is what you call he is following the path of least resistance. On the contrary what Dr. Visvalingam wanted to see in an outstanding Engineer is a person who will overcome barriers.

What does it mean? He means whenever an engineer is required to solve a problem he wanted that engineer to look beyond the problem, that is not merely to solve the problem but by solving the problem, to set a path for the future engineers to see beyond the problem.

Just as an example, you have to build a bridge. You have all the design tools, codes, standards etc., So one can just apply the standards, the codes, etc., and you design a bridge, an excellent bridge. Now, what do you mean by going beyond the problem? He should while doing that design looks for all other possibilities, all other alternatives, like what will be the effect of this bridge in an unprecedented weather event. Is there a better place to locate the bridge? May be the banks will erode away. Maybe there are storms and, the water levels exceed the design values? Some of which may not necessarily be ideally covered under all the codes and standards. What will be the social and economic impact of such a collapse? They are considerations beyond engineering.

But what he wanted to see was an engineer who will go questing for knowledge to improve the designs every time. This is the way I saw in him the particular words that he used as overcoming the barriers. Then he believes. If you go through that path, you become an engineer who is capable of overcoming barriers. He says, such engineers become qualified to plan, investigate design, construct, and maintain complex projects.

Now, I see in Dr. Visvalingam speaking of these concepts where he has been practicing in 1970 s or so, he is such a visionary engineer. He wants the person we select to be of his caliber, of course, it is a very tall order.

Eng. Manjula Samarasinghe Editor SLEN:

I still remember, Eng, Fernando, that you often emphasize, and even during the recent launch the importance of service to society, particularly the service to the poor, vulnerable, and the underserved communities. In your opinion, how strongly would you weigh in your evaluation process, the engineer's direct contribution to improving the lives of such communities? Should such an impact be treated as a major consideration when identifying the most outstanding engineer?

Eng. Shavindranath Fernando :

I Would say yes and no.

Let me begin with the criteria, you see, when you are evaluating a person for an award you are looking for a wholesome person. Now let's take an extreme case, a person may  be very good in doing work just for the betterment of the country,  the society. Let’s say he was looking at, as you said, the poor, the vulnerable and the people who are just powerless people.

But if he doesn't have the academic background nor the practical experience that is required of an engineer, there is  a problem.

We have put together a very wholesome kind of six criteria under which we will evaluate. I'm sure you are  recalling  the words of Dr. Visvalingam where he says:” I want the engineers in this country to work so as not to make rich richer, but to make poor, less poor”.

Now, that doesn't mean to say that the work of the person should only be confined to a small village, a small community, or things like that. Now, even if you do a mega project, please do not misunderstand that only the people who do mega projects, will get qualified. Absolutely no, way.

But I'm just trying to make a comparison. There's a person who has done a lot of work using his engineering, and practical knowledge with all his professional and technical skills continuously to work among the marginalized communities. Well, that's a considerable achievement. That's an impactful contribution to the whole country. Because there are so many off takes from that.

That is one aspect. On the other hand, there is someone who does a project of some sort, I'm not going to give numbers, because numbers will be very misleading. A kind of multi-dimensional project. I mean, Engineers engage in  a lot of diverse projects right now. For instance, people may be doing systems development and those systems would be immensely beneficial to country, and even meet the needs of all segments of the  of the society. That's engineering. Now, without those systems properly developed, the people who use those systems cannot deliver the end product as they intend. There are all kinds of engineers in our fold. Hence all of them should be able to compete for this award.

Now let us also take a sizable project. The end result will trickle down to, let's say, impacting hundreds or even thousands of marginalized communities.   That also has got to be taken into account because finally that project has led to alleviating their misery or whatever it may be.

I'm not going to dissect everything and that's impossible.

So let us  wait for the candidates to apply, we evaluate their work and the impact to the society, especially the marginalized communities. But how we weigh is in the in the marking scheme, and we have given all 6 attributes equal weightage. Of course, within each of those criteria, you'll be surprised, there are quite a number  of sub criteria as well.

Having worked for the last three years with the award, I think we are also calibrating our scales depending on the applicants. We are also getting to know what kind of candidates apply. You have to understand  it's just 3 years since we commenced this award. So as we go into the future, we will keep on improving the criteria, to be refined yet to be  within  the objectives of the award and  as long as we keep these very high expectations of Dr. Viswalingam intact. then I think we are going to hit the goal and get the best person whom we're looking for; the one and only outstanding engineer for a year.

Eng. Manjula Samarasinghe Editor SLEN:

I’m happy that you clarified many questions that I had. Thank you. Then again. My next question, how important are personal character, humility, honesty, ethical conduct, and the willingness to place public good about personal or, commercial gain when selecting the final recipient of this award? Do you actually believe that the most outstanding engineer should also be seen as a role model for engineers? among the young and for the especially the wider profession of this community.

Eng. Shavindranath Fernando : :

Absolutely yes Manjula. A Role Model.

Let me take a leaf out of his own personal life. He has told this several times. You know he had wanted to do farming after leaving the Engineering faculty,  after his first year. While trying to do farming he had got a scholarship to go to Japan and finally he has ended up at Cambridge and done a degree in engineering. To cut a very long story short, he had passed out with colors. Then he said he had an illustrious career in the UK for a short time, and he was sent to South Africa. He was engaged in  a major hydro dam, and a reservoir  he said  half the size of Sri Lanka!!!. With all that he could have very well stayed back in UK. Do you know what he did? He had thought to himself, that it was the people of Ceylon at that time, who contributed for his education, and he said, I'm indebted to the people of Ceylon. Then he said, he decided to pack his bags and come home to serve the people,

So is there a better example than that to emulate.  I am sure Dr. Visvalingam would like to see the award go to a person of that caliber. You asked me what kind of character one should possess in the awardee. You asked me,” how important are personal character, humility, honesty, ethical conduct, and the willingness to place public good above personal or, commercial gain when selecting the final recipient...?” Let me elaborate. Yes, he said, he wants a wholesome person with prime responsibility to serve the people of the country. Number one, then the second, is the integrity and the character of the person.

So along with the integrity of the character comes all what you say about humility, honesty, sincerity, a person willing to listen to the problems of the people.  The personality itself comes far above anything else. All those characteristics are in the evaluation criteria. It's a tall order.

We, the evaluation panel, will have a whole lot of information sift and elicit from the candidate the very things that you said. I do agree it can be  somewhat subjective. But the question is how subjective can we be? We do not want to be unfair. So, we have developed a wonderful scheme where we do a two stage evaluation one before the interview based on documentation and then during the interview where  we re-evaluate our position and then we have a weighing system just to avoid subjectivity. Where ever we could we have made the marking scheme based on measurables, again to eliminate the subjectivity.

Let me quote Dr. Visvalingam once again. He said, there’s no point in doing an irrigation programme, if there's not enough water in the canal when the farmers want it. Then he said that is also not enough, you must go and see as an engineer what the farmers are doing with that water.  Can you imagine an engineer going round the paddy fields and other farms to see what they are doing with the water? Well, that is his concern for the public good.

He was very emphatic on this, so we have been always concerned with how the engineers place public good as a priority.  I hope you got in a nutshell what the Prize Awarding Committee is looking for.

Eng. Manjula Samarasinghe Editor SLEN:

Engineer Fernando, my final question; actually, the award traditionally recognize one engineer each year. Why is only one engineer selected rather than recognize a few engineers in different categories of areas of contributions? Do you feel that there is a value in maintaining a single highest recognition? Or could there also be room in the future for broader recognition of engineers’ contributions, different ways to society like industry, innovation and public welfare?

Eng. Shavindranath Fernando :

As I said before, all those things are considered in the evaluation. Let it be in any industry, manufacturing, private sector, or public sector, as long as it falls into the criteria; it is not only construction or mega projects that everyone will see outwardly.  Any engineer who has contributed to society in whatever way may be through innovation among other things, can apply for this award. Engineering is far, far wider and it's expanding like anything.

So everybody has a chance to compete. . Everybody has to feel comfortable to apply as a candidate to begin with.

Then you ask me why only one award.  Dr. Visvalingam was very emphatic. He doesn’t want to dilute the award. We want to make this award the signature award of IESL. Academic and Professional Excellence, combined with service to the community at its best.  He wanted this award to be something that especially the young engineers will vie for.

The Awardee should be someone with whom they can identify themselves with. We have a special criterion for role modeling. How charismatic, how influential has the candidate been in mentoring the subordinates. How much contribution has the awardee made on nurturing the younger engineers in their upward progression? He just wants this to be a single award for the most outstanding engineer. He should be an engineer who will stand tall among the rest.  Of course, we have restricted the age group between 40 and 70 years. It is because those who are young aspirants of the award will see engineers in action while they are still employed   or will have a good memory of those who have retired not in the distant past.

Eng. Manjula Samarasinghe Editor SLEN:

All right. Thank you very much, Engineer, Fernando, for your valuable insights and for explaining these important matters. So, clarity. We sincerely appreciate the time, efforts, and the commitment of the Prize Awarding Committee, in carrying out this important responsibility on behalf of the institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka and the engineering profession. Finally, we hope that this discussion will help members better understand the values behind the engineer Dr. A.C. Visvalingam award for the most outstanding Engineer and also encourage continued reflection of how engineers can serve not only industry and development, but also society, especially those most in need. Thank you very much.

Once again, Engineer Shavindranath Fernando joined us today.

Eng. Shavindranath Fernando :

Thank you very much. It was really a pleasant time I had talking with You.