Safety and O&M Planning

Efficient and effective operation and maintenance (O&M) is necessary in order to guarantee the long-term operation of any sanitation system. Maximum health and environmental benefits can only be achieved in case the facilities operate continuously and at full capacity, while complying with acceptable quality standards (MÜLLEGGER et al. 2012).

Key learnings concerning designing sustainable O&M services can be summarised as follows:

• Staff/officers engaged for O&M should be fully familiar and aware of the subject of wastewater treatment as well as the key functions of the respective treatment units.
• All parties directly (operators and supervisors) or indirectly (system designers, construction companies, facility owners, service companies and authorities) involved need to understand and agree on their role in the context of long-term O&M and monitoring. Thus, active involvement of all parties when planning and organising O&M is essential. This can also foster “ownership” of the project and the facilities with all the relevant parties.
• Economic benefits derived from the systems (e.g. faecal compost, irrigation water, etc.) can be used as incentives for operating parties and system owners to carry out and monitor the O&M. The ecological benefit of treating wastewater might not be beneficial enough for owners to guarantee the sustainable long-term operation of the system.
• Mechanisms for long-term cost recovery for O&M, system monitoring and major repairs have to be discussed and agreed upon with all relevant stakeholders.
• O&M needs to be considered already in the design and implementation phase – including both “technical requirements” (e.g.: assuring the accessibility for maintenance works, assurance of continuous and stable power supply, planning of supply of certain consumables and spares) and staff and institutional requirements (e.g.: assuring that the skills needed for maintenance works are available, cost recovery mechanisms for expected costs, etc.)
• “O&M knowledge” should not be bound to single individuals, but made available and transparent to all staff. Through systematic collection of O&M experiences (e.g.: via documentations, regular staff meetings, refresher trainings, regular review of staff routines), knowledge transfer among O&M staff can be fostered and loss of “operational knowledge” due to staff rotations can be kept to a minimum. Moreover, learning processes on improvement of O&M routines can be established.
• O&M manuals (or other related supporting materials) need to be comprehensible enough to include standard operating procedures (SOPs) and other guidelines to be followed during day-to-day plant operation and in incident situations (“trouble-shooting”).

Safety and O&M Planning

Safety and O&M planning can support the development of effective O&M routines and improve their formalisation. Planning of O&M – instead of only addressing it once the systems are already in place – can allow to systematically face the aspects mentioned above.

Depending on the setting of each project and involved parties, this task can be carried out either by the system designers, the O&M contractor or an external party providing this as a service for the system owners or the designer or the O&M contractor. Ideally, the “planning” process should be initiated as early as possible during the design phase and continue along with the implementation and of course the operation phase. However, in the majority of projects, discussions around O&M might only be started when the systems are close to commissioning or even already handed over for operation. Thus, the actual implementation of the planning process can look very different from project to project.

Systematic O&M planning should target at:

• Identifying all relevant stakeholders and initiate stakeholder involvement at all levels (authorities, management and operative level) and foster agreements and understanding on the different roles and responsibilities involved in O&M and system monitoring. A template list, which was developed and used in the NaWaTech project to discuss and assign general roles and responsibilities in the context of O&M and safety management, is provided under the further readings section (NICOLICS 2015a).
• Identifying and understanding critical O&M requirements – both technical and institutional/organisational - which need to be addressed during the design, construction and operation phase. Integrating these into the design and construction process as well as into standard routines for normal operation conditions.
• Preparing general routines for incidents to shorten the time until returning back to normal operating conditions.
• Identifying critical monitoring tasks involving both inspections and quality measurements.
• Supporting the preparation of O&M materials and routines. E.g.: provide a basis for the development of the O&M manual and additional supporting materials for operators and supervisors (such as work plans, check-lists and documentation forms). A template for daily logging of sampling and inspection activities as well as for problem documentation is provided under the further reading materials section (NICOLICS and EDATHOOT 2014).
• Identifying site-specific focus topics for trainings of operators and supervisors.

This approach was developed during the NaWaTech project in order to implement O&M and safety planning based on the principles from the WHO Water and Sanitation Safety Planning concepts (DAVISON et al., 2005; BARTRAM et al., 2009; WHO, 2015), following a risk-based sanitation system approach (TILLEY et al., 2014). The underlying idea of using a risk-based planning approach is to make use of the way of thinking to tackle O&M through “prevention instead of reaction”.

The safety and O&M planning approach developed in the NaWaTech project aims to break down key ideas of safety planning to practical steps:

1. Establishment of the safety and O&M planning team.
2. Definition of system boundaries, stakeholder identification and system description.
3. Identification of hazards, risk assessment and prioritisation.
4. Identification of risk prevention and risk reduction measures (control measures).
5. Identification of monitoring measures for surveying the efficacy of the control measures.
6. Formulation of a generic trouble shooting and communication routine.

An overview on the main activities associated with these six steps is provided as further reading material (NICOLICS and LANGERGRABER 2015a).Moreover, a presentation used during a NaWaTech training to explain the background, key ideas and examples for safety and O&M planning is also provided as further reading material (NICOLICS 2015b).

Furthermore, PDF prints of NaWaTech safety and O&M planning working materials are provided (NICOLICS and LANGERGRABER 2015b) which can be used for hazard identification and the identification of respective prevention (“control measures”) and monitoring measures as well as for starting discussions on general trouble-shooting procedures for the 31 technologies and supporting equipment implemented under the NaWaTech project.

Two case studies on the application of the approach for the NaWaTech sites in Amanora Park Town and COEP campus in Pune (NICOLICS et al., 2015a) and for the pilot site at the invalid link Nagpur (NICOLICS et al., 2015b) provide more details on the methodology and main outcomes.

Experiences made during the NaWaTech project with regards to preparing O&M management as well as during safety and O&M planning activities are listed in the following table in form of main challenges encountered and possible solutions to overcome these problems in future projects: