as a department one more time, but in August of the same year it was joined again to Education and Charitable Endowments. Twelve months later, owing to the transfer of its director to Interior, it was returned to Interior. Two months later, it was joined to the War Department. In 1875, Public Works was reattached to Interior. Following the Egyptian military's seizure of power in 1882, General Mahmoud Fehmy was appointed Minister of Public Works, a role he combined with his military duties. The British Occupation Period (1882–1952) After the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, British engineers took control of the department. They concentrated on building coffer dams, and facilitating the growing barrage trade. The impact of hydraulic developments was a dramatic increase in the output of Egyptian agriculture. Some of the greatest civil engineers of the 19th century worked in the department in this era, including Sir Colin Scott-Moncrieff, Sir Hanbury Brown, Sir Benjamin Baker and Sir William Willcocks, most of whom had been trained or experienced in British India. All the major dams controlling the Nile (the Old Aswan Dam and Esna, Nag Hammadi, Assiut, Edfeina and Zifta barrages) were constructed during this period. The venerable Delta Barrage, was finally replaced in 1939 by the newly constructed Mohammed Ali Barrage several hundred meters downstream from the original barrage location, and would again be relegated to the status of a romantic river crossing. Harold Edwin Hurst's work in Egypt started in 1906 and lasted 62 years doing his best work after he reached 65. He championed the prelude to the new Aswan High Dam project which was built using his calculations of the required long-term storage capacity. The Modern Period (1952 to present) Egyptian engineers operated the Department after Egypt was liberated from the British rule. The biggest and most complicated of all public works in Egyptian history (Aswan High Dam) was constructed during this period. This period experienced influence of Soviet engineers in the 1950s and the 1960s. This was replaced by some influence of American engineers in the 1980s and the 1990s. Currently, all the public works in Egypt are controlled by the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation. The goal of the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation is to implement feasible projects that will increase agricultural productivity. The lrrigation Improvement Project was designed to do that through improving the conveyance efficiency on both the