AguaClara Five Year Plan
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 automated design 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. Our pilot model in Honduras relied on two AguaClara Engineers to work alongside and train both partner organization staff and community members. This 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.
2008
Task |
Location |
Start |
End |
|---|---|---|---|
Select next candidate communities for construction in Honduras |
Honduras |
2/2008 |
4/2008 |
Identify the funding mechanism for the next communities |
Honduras |
3/2008 |
6/2008 |
Build the water treatment plant at Tamara |
Honduras |
1/2008 |
4/2008 |
Train the Tamara plant operators |
Honduras |
5/2008 |
7/2008 |
Document Tamara plant performance |
Honduras |
5/2008 |
|
Honduras |
6/2008 |
6/2008 |
|
Hire Program Coordinator |
Cornell |
6/2008 |
6/2008 |
New Regional Partners assess potential community sites |
Honduras |
7/2008 |
1/2009 |
Mesoamerican Training Workshop |
Honduras |
9/2009 |
9/2009 |
Evaluate capital cost funding mechanisms and community financial capacity to absorb the capital costs
Fall: Begin Capacity building with new partners. Use additional workshops in Honduras coordinated by Agua para el Pueblo to train engineers and project supervisors from Mesoamerica. Mesoamerican partners will evaluate in-country communities to choose appropriate pilot sites.
Cornell AguaClara team provides detailed design documentation for the Mesoamerica pilot sites so that structural engineers in the partner organizations can create detailed structural designs.
2009
Mesoamerican partners begin community assessment processes in preparation for
New regional partners will be selected based on experience in the water supply sector, engineering and project management expertise, and the match between the AguaClara technology and the water treatment needs of their region.