Chandra Shrestha

Chandra B. Shrestha was born on 04 th Sep. 1961 in the Parbat District of Nepal which is located about 300 km west of the Kathmandu Valley. His parents were Mr. Chatur Bir Shrestha and Mrs. Til Kumari Shrestha, small holding farmer and retailer. He was the eighth and the last male child after seven sisters. In the School Leaving examination, he was among top 15 students among 60,000 total students in the country. After graduating from the Certificate Level in Civil Engineering Programme in 1981, he started working as a Junior Engineer (Overseer) in the Lamosangu – Jiri Road Project – located in the Mid- Eastern Nepal. He pursued further education in the Business Administration while working as a Technical Officer in the Balaju Industrial District, Kathmandu. He was recipient of DAAD Scholarship for studying MSc degree in Spatial Planning from the University of Dortmund, Germany and Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Thailand – a sandwich programme. He scored a highest GPA of 3.93/4 in his batch for which the Late King of Nepal decorated him with a national honour of Mahendra Vidya Bhusan – B Class.

In the mid-eighties, Chandra married Padmini Shrestha, an educationist. They are blessed with three children – two girls and one boy. He joined a World Bank and UNDP jointly funded road project as Planning Adviser where he had mandate to train the four South Western pilot districts in planning and managing district level road networks. After receiving the Government of Japan’s scholarship for his PhD degree in 1998, he joined AIT again. His basic PhD research problem was to develop a Meso level transport network considering physical and socio-economic factors. He has two published articles in the internationally refereed journals from his PhD dissertation. Acknowledging his expertise in this field, he was invited by ILO and ADB for planning and assessing transport networks in Cambodia and the Philippines respectively during and after his study.

In 2003, he was selected as the Infrastructure Adviser in DFID Nepal where he was assigned to develop and implement transport and other community infrastructures. He received the Chartered Membership from the Institution of Civil Engineers, UK in 2004. He implemented more than US $ 300 million infrastructure projects in DFID.

In 2010, he joined Nepal Engineering College as Professor of Transportation Engineering where he promoted and conducted Master Programme in Transportation Engineering and Management. He also led a research wing of the College when he undertook a number of assignments. After that he was engaged with the World Bank Nepal as Transport Specialist and as a National Transport Specialist in the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).

Following the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake, the Government of Nepal decided at the Cabinet level to appoint him as an Executive Member of the National Reconstruction Authority. Since then, Chandra was part of the NRA leadership Team that oversaw and jointly coordinated the reconstruction of 800,000 private houses, thousands of schools, hospitals, temples and other public infrastructure. After the successful expenditure of US$ 5 billion, the NRA ended on 24 Dec. 2021. For the final two years of his tenure, Chandra took on the additional role of designing, planning, and overseeing an international conference with some 160 presentations made from round the world, and including senior dignitaries from Partner Countries and International Development Partners and Donors. For his contribution to the reconstruction programme and for organising this flagship event, the Rt. Hon. Prime Minister bestowed him a certificate of appreciation which reads: “With sincere appreciation of your consistent example of the drive towards excellence of the National Reconstruction Authority, and your capable convening and stewardship of the ICNR – 2021”.

After termination of the reconstruction authority, Chandra authored a book: “Building Back Better After the 2015 Nepal Earthquake” which highlights his key insight of the reconstruction process, encountered hinderances and derived solutions.

At present, Chandra is associated as an international consultant to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) where he has been working with the Government of Nepal for formulating transport projects of national significance.