Pratim Kumar (“Tim”) Ghose, principal at Package Contracts Advisers & Engineers, in Bangkok City, and the ASCE Region 10 Governor for Thailand and surrounding countries from 2010-2015, has died. He was 84.
Ghose, F.ASCE, was well known in the industry and worked on many impressive projects. He started in the United Kingdom on-site at the Sizewell B nuclear power station and moved on to bridge designs at Freeman Fox under Oleg Kerensky, then to supervision of bridge construction in Northern Ireland in the 1960s. For the next 25 years his projects included highways, power stations, water supply, and treatment. He also worked on the steel cross erected in Dublin’s Phoenix Park for Pope John Paul II’s visit and on many overseas endeavors in Africa and the Middle East.
In time he became an expert on contracts and arbitration, including ICE and FIDIC, and accepted an offer to lead the client’s contract team in Hong Kong on the $20 billion Chep Lak Kok Airport, working alongside Douglas Oakervee. Ghose retired to Thailand after the project but undertook occasional contract advisory roles.
An Indian by birth, he later developed a love of all things Irish, and made fun of the fact that having been a long-term resident in Ireland, when he moved to Bangkok it was the Irish Society there that he joined and to which he was selected as president. That and a beer and curry evening at the British Club had him enjoying many a craic!
He joined ASCE as a member in 1967 and became a life member in 2002. He was a leader of the ASCE Thailand International Section both as its president (2003-2011) and its treasurer (2011-16). In the 1990s, Ghose was involved in setting up ASCE-TIS. He was very proactive in these roles, encouraging members to be equally active in the Society and in promotion of civil engineering. Led by his legal expertise, he also engaged many other societies. He joined and was a board member of SPET (Society of Professional Engineers), with whom ASCE-TIS was closely associated.
Ghose’s position with Package Contracts Advisers & Engineers was from January 2000 till the time of his passing, though for family reasons he had moved from Thailand to his native Kolkata in 2018.
He was quite a gregarious person who cultivated people in engineering and related businesses, and his energetic nature made him “unstoppable” and active in many spheres and societies.
