The Chair in Water Services Management focusses on the best organisation and operation of water services (water supply, sewerage and sanitation) in The Netherlands and abroad.
In the Netherlands water service delivery is characterized by diversity of institutions, ageing of workforce, and its public entity urges the need for incentives to perform efficient and be effective.
In developing countries Water companies are frequently found financially not sustainable, technically insufficiently capable, and management experience often inadequately based on knowledge, facts and long-lasting experience. Not suprising to see that at present still 1,2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water while double this amount of people have no hygienic sanitary form of human waste disposal. All together is has an alarming effect on public health, in particular that of children: every three seconds a child dies unncesssarily due to lack of basic water and sanitation facilities.
Vitens Evides International, a joint venture of the two largest water utilities in The Netherlands, is convinced that improved operational procedures, a better institutional setting and good governance, and the availaibility of new methods and technologies, may improve the overall performance of water companies. This may help to provide additional services to more people (MDG Development Goals of the UN) and so contribute to a better well-being for many more people in developing countries.
The partnership between VEI and the NHL University of Applied Sciences will ensure that capacity building in water services management will take advantage of the best mix between theory and practice. In lectures and workshops professional NHL University teachers will make participants aware of the basic knowledge that needs to be used in water services management, while VEI will make sure that via exposure to the Dutch water utilitlies and via guided (individual or group) assignments participant will be able to study and solve practical problems that will improve the operations of water utilities world wide.
The three focal point of this Chair are: (1) good governance and institutional policies (public-private, central-decentral, transparancy) (2) development and application of tools and technologies to improve operations (asset management), and (3) development of management information systems to effectively organise and run the utilities.
Siemen Veenstra
Siemen Veenstra graduated in 1982 at the Wageningen University and Research Center in Environmental Technology dealing with sewage treatment and water quality management. After a 2 years assignment to the WHO Reference Center on Water and Sanitation he joined the UNESCO_IHE Institute in Delft. He became senior resource person in urban environmental sanitation, wastewater engineering, and solid waste management.
As senior lecturer for the International Masters Courses in Sanitary Engineering, Water Resources Management and Environmental Science and Technology at IHE he lectured wastewater engineering, treatment plant operation and maintenance, urban sanitation and technology selection, activated sludge simulation sludge management, solid waste management, and wastewater use in agriculture.
Some 15 years of international experience in capacicy building and research projects in developing countres (including two years resident project manager at the University of Sana'a, Republic of Yemen), made him widely experienced in the world wide water services delivery, its problems and challenges.
His true conviction is that through cooperation more can be realised to solve and overcome global problems. As bridge builder he established in 1988 cooperation with the Wageningen University and Research Center WUR to initiate succesfull short courses in Anaerobic Wastewater Treatment AWWT. In cooperation with WUR he started in 1994 an international capacity building project on Waste Valorisation in the Middle East region comprising wastewater treatment and reuse in Palestine, Egypt and Jordan.
In 1998 he was the initiator of the establishment of an Academic Chair in Solid Waste Management within UNESCO-IHE. This comprised capacity building at local level in the establishment of cost-effective, sustainable and efficient SWM in urban areas of developing countries and countries in transition.
In 1990 as project director he established and maintained institutional collaboration with the Power and Water Institute of Technology (PWIT) under the Ministry of Energy and Water in Tehran, Iran (1992-1998) for capacity building support to Water and Wastewater Companies.
As senior expert he frequently participated in projects financed by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation FAO in Rome. In particular for its regional office of the Middle East he was engaged in capacity building and project evaluations in the field of sustainable water management and wastewater use in agriculture. Since 2001 he joined VITENS, the largest water utility in The Netherlands. As strategic manager he took a lead in the national discussion on integrated water service delivery. Since 2003 he returned into the international area and joined Vitens Evides International. VEI is currently responsible for water services delivery to over 10 million customers. Siemen Veenstra established sofar public-private partnership projects with water utilities in Yemen and Mongolia.
Projects
The Chair Water Services Management will undertake research and capacity building projects in order to find novel solutions for management and operations in order to improve the overall performance of water utilities worldwide and make service delivery sustainable, accessible and affordable.
Capacity building aims to translate theory into practice. With external support capacity building projects will be undertaken (including Professional Master Programmes) to provide basic theory through lectures and workshops and enrich these with experience from water utilities all over the world (amongst others within the international VEI projects in Yemen, Mozambique, Ghana, Mongolia, Vietnam, and Indonesia). By doing so the benefits are vice versa:
- Theory and knowlegde will be applied in daily practice of water while;
- relevant practices will enrich capacity building (transfer best practice).
By doing so the Chair aims to contribute to the mission of Willem Alexander, Prince of Orange, who as Chairman of the UN Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation, wants to strengthen the overal performance of water service utilities worldwide through exchange and capacity building programmes.