Willem F. Vlotman worked with Dutch and American consultants on agricultural drainage, urban drainage and irrigation projects in the Netherlands, the West Indies and Asia. In 1988, he joined the International Institute for Land Reclamation and Improvement (ILRI) and has worked for this organisation in Pakistan, Egypt and the Netherlands. In 2004 he immigrated to Australia and worked with the Murray-Darling Basin Authority until retirement in 2017. Willem Vlotman was chairman of the Working Group on Drainage of the international Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID) from 1995-2013. Lambert K. Smedema worked most of his career for Euroconsult on irrigation in Africa and South America and on drainage in the Middle East and Asia. He was a lecturer/researcher at the University of Nairobi and at the Delft University of Technology. During the nineties, he worked as a consultant with the World Bank and with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Lambert Smedema is currently working as an independent consultant. David W. Rycroft began his professional career working for the UK Ministry of Agriculture at their Field Drainage Experimental Unit based in Cambridge. He subsequently joined consultants Sir M MacDonald and Partners and worked as a salinity control and land drainage specialist on large projects in Iraq, Somalia and Egypt. In 1979, David Rycroft joined the Institute of Irrigation Studies (Southampton University) to teach in combination with his overseas consultancy work.