...
- Have engineering and project management expertise in infrastructure
- Understand and be able to effectively negotiate the legal and regulatory environment both at the national and local levels
- Have expertise in working with communities to facilitate community empowerment to manage their own water supply system.
- Have a permanent presence in the region where they are proposing to build facilities so that communities have access to ongoing technical support on a permanent basis. An alternative is to create a technical support system perhaps based on the circuit rider model used in rural United States and some other countries.
- Be prepared to build many AguaClara facilities. Building one AguaClara facility requires a large investment in training and capacity building and long term commitment to provide technical support to the community. Thus an implementation partner must be prepared to build many AguaClara plants so that economies of scale work in their favor especially for the ongoing technical support of the communities.
Build, operate, transfer is a well know infrastructure implementation strategy. The AguaClara model draws on that model, but recognizes the need for greater emphasis on community assessment, capacity building, and a low level of oversight and ongoing technical support after the project has been fully transferred to the municipality or local water board.