Quality service delivery for the community by the community – always something new at this conference. This morning’s most ground-breaking presentation had to be that given by Oliver Ive of Amanz’ abantu. The paper presented showcased a several pilot projects was written by the partners in this project, namely Dr Kevin Wall of the CSIR, Olive Ive, Jay Bagwahn of the Water Research Commission, Wayne Birkholtz  and Esther Shaylor of Impilo Yaabantu, Nocawe Lupwana, Franchisee sole proprietor.

Franchising operations and management (O&M) of public services – certainly a new concept for this writer. Financial instruments and build own operate agreements are one thing, but a franchise is something normally associated with the private sector. But when considered in the light of this paper, it makes great sense. Fundamentally, a municipality which lacks capacity but has the principles and processes to make a job work is well positioned to consider this option.

Oliver Ive made a brilliant point: in many cities in Africa, you can buy a tank of petrol, hamburger and soft drinks, but for some reason, the water supply is either contaminated or erratic or both. There can be only one reason for this – shortfalls in skills and management. So the petrol station and burger joint are functioning just fine, and they are all franchises. Why then not use franchising in the water sector?

Successful pilots

Several pilot projects have put the concept to the test. Social franchising is simply the application of the franchising concept to achieve socially beneficial ends. The relationship dynamic exists between the franchisor, the franchisee and the customer. Franchisors and franchisees are mutually dependant: the franchisee requires the expertise, the processes and sometimes the branding too – a business in a box concept. The franchisor needs the franchisee to keep the business concept alive and growing. Customers most often make no distinction between the two. The concept provides training, a quality management system and procedures and the support of the off-site skills held by the franchisor. The first pilot was the Butterworth Pilot a need to provide sanitation services to the local schools was identified. The sanitation system sin many of the schools were so bad and poorly managed that many children risked their on a daily basis, and many girl-child learners lost valuable time at school. The objective was to test an outsourcing project, with franchisees applying their learned skills in emptying, cleaning and maintaining the system as franchisee business, run by themselves along uniform principles, practises and standards. After an expected drop out rate, the franchisees that persevered have shown that indeed, franchising these traditionally municipal services can and does work. Making a profound difference to the education and health of the communities.

There are several pilot projects on the go and more than 30 water and sanitation based franchise opportunities have been identified. Make sure to read the full story  – plus an interview Oliver Ive in the January edition of IMIESA.

Dynamic findings in Municipal engineering

This was day one of the conference and a rich variety of papers were presented. Adrienne Vienings of Water Concepts undertakes incredibly detailed and hands on audits and studies of skills and expertise in the water sector. She literally travels the country, visiting municipalities and working with them to determine how they are delivering according to their mandate. Her system is completely process driven and starts at the mandate level, revealing exactly what the municipalities can actually deliver according their skills and competencies, and reveals the gaps in a very rational manner. What is interesting about her work is not so much the findings – critical though they are – but that she leaves each municipality with an absolute truth about what they actually can deliver versus what they are mandated to do. This is crucial – because it is actually not as obvious as one might think. Yes – organisation like to think they can stretch a resource here and a resource there – but in the world of delivering safe water, if the skills is not present, the work is not done. Municipalities have to look beyond the grandiosity of their Vision and Mission statements and start to face the facts.

Youngest presenter delivers

Congratulations must go to Sarel van Baalen, masters’ student in engineering management at the University of Stellenbosch. Sarel is the youngest person ever to have presented a paper at IMESA and carried himself with skill and confidence. In contrast to Vienings paper, van Baalen has put his mind to the concept of self-assessments as a catalyst for change. The significant shortage of organisational capacity in local government has not responded well to any of the interventions to date. Van Baalen undertook a study to determine whether self-assessment – a valuable took in the private sector for change – might not be effective in the municipal arena. He concluded that indeed, the proposed Organisational Capacity Self-Assesment Model for South African Municipalities does indeed hold the potential for performance improvement. This is going to be tested in the Western Cape and you can trust that IMIESA will be looking Sarel to provide some findings.

The day closed with IMESA’s AGM. There is an increase in technical tours at this year’s conference. We are off to visit a wind farm before preparing for the gala dinner – themed the South African Game! Time to buy a green and gold scarf…