DFI Middle East Team
Chair
Dr. Salah Al Dilimi
Roads and Transport Authority (RTA)
Dr. Salah Abdulatif Al Dilimi is the Rail Infrastructure Maintenance Manager at the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) in Dubai, overseeing the maintenance and safety of the city’s rail infrastructure. He has over 27 years of international experience in geotechnical and civil engineering across the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and the Middle East. Dr. Al Dilimi holds a Master’s degree and a Higher Diploma from the University of Auckland. He is Chair of the Deep Foundations Institute (DFI) Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Chapter and actively contributes to advancing Building Information Modeling (BIM) practices within RTA.
Vice Chair, Secretary
Dr. Marwan Alzaylaie
Dubai Development Authority
Dr. Marwan Alzaylaie is a geotechnical engineer with over 22 years of experience across industry and academia. He is the Senior Manager of Geotechnical Engineering at the Dubai Development Authority (DDA), where he leads complex geotechnical design and construction oversight, including foundation engineering, soil stabilization, ground improvement, dewatering systems, and geotechnical site supervision.
Dr. Alzaylaie is also an Adjunct Faculty member at Heriot-Watt University Dubai and Abu Dhabi University, where he teaches geotechnical engineering and supervises research at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He earned his Ph.D. in Civil/Geotechnical Engineering from Technische Universität Darmstadt (TU Darmstadt) in Germany, focusing on the stiffness and strength of Dubai’s sedimentary rock formations. He holds both B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Sharjah.
He has published over 25 research papers in peer-reviewed journals and international conferences and actively contributes to the geotechnical community. Dr. Alzaylaie is a founding member and currently serves as the Vice Chair & Secretary of the Deep Foundations Institute (DFI) Middle East Chapter. He is also a founding member of the Geotechnical & Material Engineering Committee of the Society of Engineers – UAE and has served on the Technical Committee TC217 on Land Reclamation of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE).
Immediate Past Chair
Emad Sharif
FNP Consultant
Emad Sharif, earned his B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from Alexandria University, Egypt (1982) and a Master’s degree in Geotechnical Engineering from Stanford University, USA (1984). He began his academic career as a lecturer at Birzeit University, the leading institution in Palestine for modern education systems, where he taught in the Civil Engineering Department from 1984 to 1994.
In 1994, Emad joined the Arab Centre for Engineering Studies (ACES) as General Manager of its Palestine branch and later moved to Dubai in 2004 to manage the ACES operations in Dubai and Oman. Since 2016, he has served as the Geotechnical Engineering Director at e.construct, a specialist consultancy renowned for value engineering services e.construct. Additionally, Emad co-founded GTC LAB (Geotechnical Testing Consultants) in Dubai in July 2016, providing advanced geotechnical and non-destructive testing (NDT) services.
Throughout his career, Emad has contributed to geotechnical investigations for landmark projects such as Burj Khalifa (Dubai), Kingdom Tower (Jeddah), Palm Jumeirah (Dubai), and Duqm Port (Oman). His expertise spans site investigation planning, geotechnical evaluation and interpretation, pile design and testing, liquefaction analysis, slope stability, dewatering and shoring system design, soil-structure interaction studies, instrumentation and monitoring, and ground improvement works.
Emad is a member of the Society of Engineers U.A.E., the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), and is a co-founder of the Emirates Ground Engineering Forum (EGEF). He currently serves as the Chair of the Deep Foundations Institute (DFI) Middle East and North Africa (MENA) chapter Deep Foundations Institute – MENA. Additionally, he has been elected as a representative for accredited laboratories on the Advisory Technical Committee of the Emirates International Accreditation Center (EIAC), formerly known as DAC.
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