Working Areas

The partnership project comprises seven components, called working areas.

WOP project management/Programme support

This working area (main mentor responsibility with HSY) covers common management tasks, such as work planning, reporting, coordination and communication within the WOP team and with GWOPA and other stakeholders, as well as giving visibility to EU-WOP project activities. Other duties include organisation of Steering Committee meetings and minor procurement (laptops, server and videoconferencing equipment) to improve the BDWSS's operational capacity.

Water distribution – non-revenue water (NRW) reduction

NRW reduction (main mentor responsibility with HSY) is one of BDWSS's priority development areas and supported also by other projects. Due to parallel interventions, we deleted some of the initially planned activities from our scope and we focus on the following activities:

  • bottom-up assessment by creating one district metered area DMA and, perform night flow measurements to better grasp the factors that determine NRW;
  • testing of several NRW reduction interventions to feed the overall NRW reduction plan;
  • for the selected DMA: network assessment, covering pipes (size, length, material, installation year); valves (type, size, number); fire hydrants (type, size, number); public water taps (type, number); other equipment; customer connections (type, number); pipe burst reports; pipe condition survey reports; and pressure management plan; and
  • introduction and initial development of a NRW Reduction Plan.

Asset management

This working area (main mentor responsibility with HSY) is another priority of BDWSS and also a component of Second Urban Water Supply and Sanitation Project (2nd UWSSP) financed by the World Bank (WB) and a target area for VEI’s WaterWorX. In order to avoid overlapping, it was decided jointly with BDWSS that HSY will focus on water meter management. Consequently, our asset management includes:

  • inventory of installed water maters and water meters in store;
  • development of a water meter register;
  • Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for water meters;
  • process for meter procurement, maintenance, calibration and replacement; and
  • training on meter replacement and technology.
  • Low-income area management (main mentor responsibility with HSY)
  • community management and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) awareness raising,
  • training to write investment proposals to enable BDWSS to attract additional funding from other financiers, and
  • provision of access to water to approximately 3,300 people.

Low-income household water supply

Low-income household water supply (main mentor responsibility with HSY) was initially called Low-income area management. BDWSS informed during the fact finding mission in June 2022 that there is a high number of low-income households residing along the distribution line that have no network connection, and they would be a suitable target group for our EU-WOP.

Based on wide experience, a major obstacle to connect households is that the connection fee is too high to pay all at once. It has been agreed between BDWSS and HSY that we try to introduce instalment scheme(s) to ease the one-time burden. If this is successful, it might be possible to provide access to approximately 3,300 people even as we have no budget for implementation. The revised scope of this working area consists of:

  • survey on the willingness and ability to pay of low-income households; and conditions under which they could acquire connections;
  • preparation of a political decision on financing modality for low-income household connec­tions;
  • design and conduction of an information campaign on applying for financing for household connection; and
  • provision of 660 connections to low-income households or to 3,300 people.

Customer relations and billing

This working area (main mentor responsibility with VEI) was about to overlap with asset management after the decision to concentrate on water meters in asset management. Hence, meter replacement strategy, including training was transferred from this working area to asset management. Customer relations and billing, subsequently includes:

  • review of billing processes and proposal for improvements;
  • analysis of customer database; and
  • update of customer database, a house-to-house survey, including verification of data on water meters, and design/implementation of a process for regular updating of the customer data-base.

Leadership and management capacity

Leadership and management capacity (mentor responsibility with HSY and VEI), as its title suggests, concentrates on the capacity development of the utility's management.

BDWSS's managerial practices, specifically business planning and budgeting, are improved by face-to-face training of the top management of BDWSS, supplemented by virtual mentoring, both provided by HSY.

Leadership, through all layers of the utility, is enhanced by the Field Level Leadership (FLL) methodology, which has been proven of great value in the water utility of Addis Ababa. FLL training, provided by experienced trainers from the Addis Ababa utility and organised by VEI, creates a sense of belonging and responsibility for all participants.

Enabling environment and governance

In this working area (main mentor responsibility with EBC) we focus on further development of the concept of a benchmarking system in order to collect data for BDWSS responsible management to be able to monitor actual performance and compare the performance with other utilities in Ethiopia.

 

 

HSY-botti