Growth Models for scaling to 1000 plants per year
Project growth will depend on a combination of demand for the technology by consumers and on the ability to design, build, train, finance, and maintain the facilities. We split these functions into 4 groups:
- Reactor and hydraulic design
- Structural design, construction, capacity building
- Finance
- Operation and Maintenance
The AguaClara team is working on a web based design tool to handle the reactor and hydraulic design. The structural design, construction, capacity building, finance, and O&M are more difficult. If our goal is to address municipal water treatment for 100 million at a cost or $20 per person, then we have a funding need for $2 billion. It is unlikely that the donor community will want to fund such a large undertaking and thus we must be developing other revenue streams.
Potential revenue streams for the capital costs include
- Grants
- Government funding channeled through the municipality or water board
- Donor or aid grants
- User fees
- Expendable Commodity Contract
- Community fundraiser
- Loan that is paid back over 5-10 years
- Microfinance or water credit
It is possible that a blend of these options can be used. The revenue stream source and the partner responsible for the structural design, construction, capacity building, and finance can in many cases be independent decisions. The ultimate success of the project will be strongly affected by the ability of the partner to create a sense of pride and ownership in the project as well as a position of trust with the community. Indeed, the community willingness to pay is expected to be strongly influenced by the level of trust between the partner and the community.
The implementing partner could be a
- multinational engineering firm
- global NGO
- local engineering firm
- local NGO
- National or Departmental government agency
These choices break down neatly into a matrix of global vs. local and not for profit vs. for profit vs. governmental. As we seek to select new partners we can identify some of the characteristics that will increase the chance of successful implementation
- Experience in implementing community scale projects
- Engineering staff who are committed to learning new skills
- Committed to a long term presence to be able to provide follow up training and technical assistance
- Trusted by the communities to treat them fairly and to deliver the services promised. This trust will increase the community willingness to pay.
Cell phone vs. treadle pump implementation model
It might be helpful to consider two very different
Regional Partner Model
The AguaClara growth model is based on establishing partnerships with organizations that have expertise in the water supply sector and who have a strong structural engineering capacity. These partners take the responsibility for creating the structural engineering design for the AguaClara water treatment plants, choosing the communities that meet the community prerequisites for appropriate sites, supervising the construction, training the plant operators, and working with the communities on issues of governance and infrastructure management.
We anticipate a very high demand for robust, energy efficient, water treatment technologies given the combination of a large unmet need for safe drinking water, the increased demand due to population growth and urbanization, and the need to replacing aging infrastructure. The AguaClara team is committed to Open Source Engineering as one tool to help disseminate the technology. To meet our goal of eventually providing the designs for 1000 water treatment plants per year we are developing an Design Tool tool that will make it possible to deliver customized detailed designs to partner organizations over the internet.
Another significant challenge is the development of a trained workforce in the partner organizations that build the water treatment plants. Our pilot model in Honduras relied on a series of AguaClara Engineers who worked alongside and trained both partner organization staff and community members. This North to South dissemination model could be expanded by increasing the number of AguaClara Engineers and by sending them to multiple sites. However, exclusive dependence on AguaClara Engineers from Cornell is probably not sustainable nor the best strategy. The AguaClara engineers can provide an excellent understanding of the water treatment technology, but their skill set must be complemented by staff of the local partner organization who have experience constructing and operating AguaClara water treatment plants.
Our plan is to empower the local partner organizations to take the lead in spreading the technology by hosting workshops and by creating training programs for technicians and engineers from potential partner organizations. This South to South dissemination model suggests that growth will occur most readily regionally. Developing new "infection" sites globally may require use of the North to South dissemination model for strategic regions.
Expendable Commodity Model
This model is similar to the technique used by inkjet printer manufacturers. The printer is sold at a very low cost and then the income for the manufacturer is based on selling the ink cartridges. The most significant input required to keep the AguaClara plants operational is aluminum sulfate. The aluminum sulfate commodity vendors could increase the demand for their product by financing the construction of the water treatment plants and then require a 10 year contract with the community during which time the community is required to purchase a certain amount of aluminum sulfate at a price that is elevated to recover the capital and loan costs.
Multinational Engineering Firm Model
This model would only work if the engineering firm had experience working with small community projects. Experience with large scale infrastructure would not be very applicable towards these small projects. The