Water

Water Operators Partnership Program
Training Workshops

The Water Operators Partnership (WOPs) program works to enable water utilities to improve service coverage and delivery, financial sustainability, and other aspects of their performance. One of the WOPs program’s strategies is to organize training workshops on technical aspects of water utility operations.

MORE ABOUT WOP Main Page Formation of Water Utilities Networks Continuous Improvement and Benchmarking Twinning of Water Utilities Training Workshops

To improve the technical capacity of water utilities, WOPs will design and implement training programs focused on specific aspects of utility operations. Among the possible topics are:

• NRW management
• Tariff setting and regulation
• Asset management
• Cost recovery
• Improved metering, billing, and collection

The first training workshop, held at the ADB headquarters in May 2008 with support from the World Bank Institute, was part of a programmatic curriculum on NRW management. Around 70 representatives from 40 SAWUN and SEAWUN member utilities spent an entire week learning how to establish a standardized water balance, calculate water losses, reduce commercial and physical water losses, and formulate an NRW Assessment and Management Plan. A post-training evaluation revealed that the different backgrounds and perspectives of the participants fostered richer and more diverse discussions, thereby heightening their learning experience.

To ensure application of the knowledge acquired from the training, the participants were given take-home assignments to establish their respective utility’s water balance and verify its components, calculate commercial and physical losses, and carry out a pressure monitoring program on their own facilities. These skills will enable utilities to design an NRW management and reduction program. These assignments were reviewed during the 2nd NRW workshop held in November 2008 in Sabah, Malaysia.

Leadership forums are currently exploring the different factors contributing to the success of some Asian utilities, e.g. Cambodia’s Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority, the Philippines’’ Manila Water Company Inc., Singapore’s Public Utilities Board, and Viet Nam’s Hai Phong Water Supply Services. The 1st SEAWUN Leadership Forum was held in October 2008 in Lang Prabang, Lao PDR.

Top

Top

Paul van Klaveren
Water Supply and Sanitation Specialist, ADB
E-mail: pvanklaveren@adb.org

Mai Flor
Water Governance Specialist, ADB
Email: mflor@adb.org