By a decree of the President of the Republic of 15 February 1928, the Polesie Land Reclamation Project Office was established, with its headquarters in Brest-on-the-Bug, the capital of the Polesie Voivodeship at that time. The institution was subordinate directly to the Ministry of Public Works, and was headed by a director, appointed by the President on the proposal of the Minister of Public Works. This became Eng. Józef Pruchnik (1873-1951), who had served as Minister of Public Works in the years 1918-1919.

The Bureau's primary objective was to develop a general project and cost estimate for the drainage of Polesia. The drainage project covered the Polesie voivodeship and partly the Volhynia, Białystok and Nowogródek voivodeships, with a total area of 5.8 million hectares (including 1.5 hectares of Polesie marshes). The project was to include both the regulation of rivers and natural and artificial navigable waterways, as well as basic land reclamation on the basis of technical measurements and surveys.