On 29 June 2021 the Philippine Association of Water Districts (PAWD) virtually kicked off its benchmarking programme for water services.
General Manager and project leader of the benchmark project Mario Villasol, presenting the Tool and the EBC methodology
Early 2020 PEWUP, a Water Operator Partnership between PAWD, four Philippine water utilities and VEI (on behalf of the Dutch WaterWorX-programme), started an ambitious project to develop a national benchmarking programme for (500+) Philippine Water Districts, with the goal of improving water services. EBC Foundation was asked by VEI to help converting existing data collection and -reporting efforts into a professional benchmarking programme.
To raise awareness at the Philippine Water Districts, in a well attended webinar EBC explained the benchmarking concept to senior management and encouraged them to join PAWD’s benchmarking- and improvement efforts.
On the content side, PAWD and EBC explored the existing data collection efforts and discussed the way forward. At the end of 2020, PAWD chose to not invent the wheel again and adopt EBC’s benchmarking methodology – a sound, universally applicable methodology, based on IWA’s performance indicator system, enhanced with 15 years of benchmarking experiences, containing standardised definitions of variables and indicators.
PAWD’s choice for an existing, proven methodology enables a quick start of the benchmarking activities. Because of the standardisation, it also eases performance comparisons with utilities abroad. In the near future, PAWD plans to add European reference values to its benchmarking programme for the interpretation of results and for well-founded target setting.
After acquiring a methodology license from EBC, PAWD together with local partners developed its own IT-tools to collect data online and report on performance comparisons. On 29 June 2021 the methodology and the tools were presented in a virtual meeting for utilities and stakeholders to officially kick-off the programme.
EBC congratulates PAWD with this milestone and encourages Philippine Water Districts to participate in the initiative and become part of a growing network of utilities that continuously improve their water services!
Also interested in benchmarking collaboration? Contact the EBC-team via administrator@waterbenchmark.org.