Commissioned by the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority to meet growing demands on Abu Dhabi's power and water systems, the Shuweihat Independent Water and Power Project (IWPP) is the world’s largest IWPP, and includes a 1,500 MW combined-cycle power plant, a 120 million-U.S.-gallon-per-day desalination plant, 220 kV and 400 kV power substations and a 188 million-U.S.-gallon-per-day water-pumping station. PB served as technical consultant to the developer group, CMS Energy and International Power, and as owner's engineer for the Project Company SCIPCO during the project’s implementation phase.

A key hurdle was a 118-day delay in a critical power line connection. Although it was outside the project scope, PB worked with SCIPCO on a revised schedule, completing the plant only 79 days later than originally planned.  "SCIPCO believes that this is due in part to the timely and diligent design reviews and field inspections completed by PB Power," wrote Dave Price, Executive Managing Director of SCIPCO in a letter to PB.

For the Shuweihat project, PB engineers Paul Willson and George Atkinson developed the first significant change to the multi-stage flash desalination process since its invention in 1957.  The modification reduces steam consumption by 3 percent with a 1 percent savings in fuel and a reduction of 75,000 tons per year of carbon dioxide emissions—at additional project costs of only 0.1 percent.  Patented in the United Kingdom and other countries, this innovation received the British Energy Trophy for Sustainable Engineering from the UK Engineering Council and numerous other awards.