Participation

The IB2012-benchmarking exercise

In 2013, the European Benchmarking Co-operation organises its next international benchmarking exercise for water services. The exercise covers data of 2012 and offers a great opportunity to get a closer picture of your utility's performance and identify ways for improvement in an international setting.

The benchmarking exercise starts with an orientation & training workshop on 8 May 2013 in the office of HOFOR, the energy- and water utility for the Copenhagen region (Denmark).
This workshop targets in particular at those who are (relatively) new to benchmarking and would like to be informed about EBC's benchmarking programme and the IB2012 exercise in particular. Click here for the workshop details.

The benchmarking exercise runs from mid May to mid December 2013, in order to have results before the end of the year.

IB2012 primarily targets at European water utilities, although utilties from outside Europe who wish to improve themselves are also most welcome to participate and benefit from the peer utility network.

Click here to download the letter of invitation and the project plan.

Why participate?

Water utilities can benefit from the programme in several ways. At first, the programme offers you the opportunity to look at the performance of your own utility from a different perspective. In the assessment stage, EBC analyses your performance comprehensively in five areas: water quality, reliability, service quality, sustainability and finance & efficiency. 

Next, you are able to compare your own performance with that of European peer utilities and identify possible performance gaps.

By actively participating in the programme and the utilities' network, you can learn from leading practices and improve by adapting these to your own situation.

Finally, the programme provides you with objective performance information that you can use for communication with stakeholders.

Participants can choose to benchmark at the level of detail that best fits the availability of data, benchmarking experience, available resources and ambition.
EBC's benchmarking programme offers three participation levels: basic, standard or advanced. Obviously, utilities can benefit most by analysing their performance in more detail. We encourage utilities to participate at least at the standard level!

Via the login button on the homepage participants can enter a dedicated application, to submit the required data and view benchmarking results on-line.

Example of on-line data-entry:

Example of on-line reporting:

Deliverables of the project are:

• an orientation & training workshop to explain the programme, the benchmarking process and the methodology;
• a dedicated help-desk for guidance to participants;
• individual (confidential) company reports in which utilities, for selected key performance indicators, are compared with other participants;
• an international benchmarking workshop for discussing results, exchanging best practices, networking and preparing next steps for improvement;
• possibility to produce full listing of results on-line, with grouping and filtering options for tailored analysis;
• an (anonymous) public report, to inform stakeholders at headlines about the benchmarking programme, the participants and key results;
• a project evaluation.
  

Project outline

Project outline in terms of main activities/milestones and planning:

Conditions

To cover the project costs, participants pay a particpation fee of € 9.000,-

Since the EBC-partners also want to encourage smaller utilities (less than 100.000 inhabitants) to participate, these utilities pay a reduced fee of € 1.500, - if they just join the basic level.

The EFQM Benchmarking Code of Conduct is applicable to the project.

Registration

If you wish to register, please complete and return the registration form according to the provided instructions.  

More information

For more information, please contact us at info@waterbenchmark.org.