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AguaClara at Cornell is a center for research and design of sustainable engineered processes for surface water treatment. As opposed to point of use devices that provide water to individuals, AguaClara systems provide drinking water at the municipal scale. Cornell student research teams learn to use state of the art process control to automate parametric testing. The automated systems make it possible for teams to conduct sophisticated experiments without continuous presence. This in turn makes it possible for student teams to conduct experiments along with their other coursework. Experimental automation also makes it possible to explore a wider parameter space per unit time, allowing student teams to thoroughly test their ideas and to quickly adapt their hypotheses to respond to new results. The research teams generate knowledge that is used to improve AguaClara designs and create new treatment processes. An important incentive to students in AguaClara research teams is that they get to see the results of their work built and used to benefit people.
The AguaClara project teams at Cornell synthesizes their rapidly evolving knowledge into an online design tool that is used by implementation partners to design municipal drinking water treatment plants. This design tool is an AguaClara innovation that creates customized designs on demand using the power of computer automation. The AguaClara design team creates dimensionally correct, scalable algorithms to convert the physical constraints (as determined through research) into water treatment plant dimensions, flow velocities, and energy dissipation rates. These algorithms incorporate materials databases to ensure that the designs can be constructed using generic locally available materials.
The online design tool is used by partner organizations to design municipal water treatment plants that they then build. The online automated design tool is one of the core inventions of the AguaClara program at Cornell and is a key component of the strategy to disseminate AguaClara technology globally through a network of multiple implementation partners. The design tool creates in 5 minutes a customized design that is valued at over $10,000. The high cost of custom engineering designs is one of the factors that has prevented small cities with limited financial resources from building municipal drinking water treatment plants.
Communication between the partner organizations and the team at Cornell creates an efficient innovation system. It takes approximately one year for the AguaClara program to move an idea through the stages of invention, research, design and implementation. The complexity of treating surface waters, the multiple processes that must be coupled, and the need to invent new systems that meet the criteria of sustainability provide the impetus for a long term Program where extensive expertise can be acquired through multiple iterations of the innovation cycle. This is the key reason why AguaClara is a Program rather than a project.
The distinction between Programs and Projects has been well articulated by J. LeRoy Ward who writes:
"A project has a defined start and end point and specific objectives that, when attained, signify completion. A programme, on the other hand, is defined as a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits not available from managing the projects individually. A programme may also include elements of on-going, operational work. So, a programme is comprised of multiple projects and is created to obtain broad organizational or technical objectives. There are many differences between a project and a programme including scope, benefits realization, time, and other variables. One notable difference is time; for example, a project by definition has a beginning and an end (or at least one hopes so!); certain programmes, while having a beginning may not have an end." --J. LeRoy Ward, author of Dictionary of Project Management Terms and Executive Vice President at ESIInternational, a global learning company.
The AguaClara Program is ongoing with many years of inventions/research/design/implementation ahead. The AguaClara Program at Cornell has multiple research and design projects that are components of the overall program. Key features of the AguaClara Program are:
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