Emanti's Grant Mackintosh and Philip de Souza attended the recent International Water Week (IWW) held in Amsterdam, Netherlands from 29th October to 4th November 2011.  The main goal of the IWW is to highlight integrated solutions throughout the water cycle. During this week several conferences was held including the Water Operators’ Partnerships (WOP) Conference with the theme “Each One Teach One” and the International Conference on Benchmarking. 

The main aim of the WOP Conference was to build on the lessons learnt from different parts of the world and to also to contribute to this initiative. Furthermore, the conference gave opportunity for interested parties to start a new WOP with global partners.  Four different topics were discussed during the WOP conference:

1. WOPs and Finance, WOPs a precondition for future Investment programs
2. WOP and MDGs. WOPs the only sustainable way to achieve MDBs
3. WOPs and Economical spin off are going hand in hand! The benefits for both partners
4. WOPs and Civil Society, the key to success! WOP should interact and co-operate with other organization like labour unions, embassies, NGOs and woman empowerment

The International conference on Benchmarking gave opportunity to profile the South African benchmarking initiative as well as opportunity to learn from and understand current benchmarking initiatives/trends, interact with leading water services benchmarking experts and discuss the suggested South African approach/methodology, typical challenges, tips for initiation and getting going, etc. and to get first-hand experience of the IWA benchmarking framework and associated methodologies through a tutorial based training workshop. In addition to establishing valuable networks with leading benchmarking specialists, the two team members also managed to view and discuss currently utilised web-based benchmarking database systems.

A poster on the Department of Water Affairs (DWA) Municipal Strategic Self-Assessment (MuSSA) initiative (which is linked to the benchmarking initiative as a basic stepping stone for determining the appropriateness of a water services authority participating in benchmarking – i.e. part of determining a municipality’s ability or readiness to benchmark) was also presented at the IWW Benchmarking Conference. The approach utilised (and in particular the use of Action Plans to close identified gaps) was widely praised amongst conference attendees.

The main topics of discussion during the benchmarking conference were:

1. Translating benchmarking results into performance improvement
2. Which learning instruments are useful/not useful
3. International benchmarking achievements and results
4. Desired future benchmark developments or initiatives
5. The effects of performance rankings and comparisons
6. Cross sector benchmarking (which industries, how to organize)
7. Benchmarking operational excellence, experiences and practices, regarding innovation, R&D, knowledge development, customers, sustainability, efficiency, cooperation, employer of choice.

For more information about the benchmarking initiative, contact Grant Mackintosh or Philip de Souza.