Heinz Ludwig, the author gained his professional expertise during more than five decades of business activities as design and commissioning engineer, project manager, project director as well as senior engineer, lead engineer and expert for seawater desalination technologies, environmental protection and treatment of process water, drinking water and waste water. In his more than 30 years of professional activity in desalination consultancy and engineering he was involved in a multitude of worldwide projects of brackish water and seawater desalination with thermal processes and membrane technology and provided consultancy in all fields of engineering and implementation of desalination plants and their associated process-related systems and components. In appreciation of his many years of international activity in the planning and design of seawater desalination plants, Global Water Intelligence GWI honoured him with the Jim Stewart Lifetime Achievement Award. The award was presented to him at the Global Water Summit 2011 in Berlin by Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the United Nations.