[1] He later undertook other major irrigation projects in South Africa and in Arab regions of the dying Ottoman Empire.

Willcocks was born and baptised in Landour, India, one of four sons of a British Engineer posted in Roorkee for Ganges canal works.

The Hindiya Barrage was consequently built on the River Euphrates near ancient Babylon being completed in 1914, bringing 3,500,000 acres (14,200 km2) under irrigation and in so doing fashioned much of modern Iraq.

He later worked on irrigation projects in Romania shortly before the outbreak of World War I, and again as late as 1928 in Bengal, where he had received some his early training.

In Egypt he published a pamphlet critical of the Nile dams project and in so doing defamed the Under-Secretary of State for Public Works, Sir Murdoch MacDonald.