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SOCIETE WALLONE DES EAUX (SWDE)

Ensuring top-class water quality through continuous monitoring

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International COOPERATION SWDE is ironing out the details in operational performance, ensuring its customers receive the best possible service through creating strategies for excellence Writer: Phoebe Calver | Project Manager: Richard Thomas

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EME

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WATER TREATMENT meets this need for both residential and industrial uses. For more than 15 years we have developed innovative products to allow for clean water. Our company, Dr. Nähring Water Treatment GmbH, was started by Dr. Jens Nähring in the year 2002 in Stuttgart, Germany. Since then we have increased in quantity of products, services and personnel. “Clean water is a basic need“ – this has been our motto over the past years and our motivation to develope products that are compatible with enviromental requirements.

Working hand in hand with authorities we keep optimizing our products.

Dr. Jens Nähring, Schönbergstr. 35, 73760 Ostfildern-Kemnat T: +49 711 914 58 471-73 | F: +49 711 914 584 75 | E: marcy.naehring@dr-naehring.de

Currently our product range covers more than 30 cleaners and antiscalants each. Additionally we offer flocculants and biocides as well. Our customers mainly plant manufacturers, end customers and distributors operate worldwide. Distributors as partners in different European countries reselling our products, plant manufacturers building facilities to gain clean drinking water or to recycle process water. Most of our end customers are local authorities and muncipalitues who want to make drinking water accessible for their region.

Our research and development sector is running studies to improve the performance of our products more in small membrane systems and with varios testing methods. Furthermore, we offer membrane autopsies and analyses of scalings or foulings in our laboratory. We want to use our expertise to proceed the access of drinking water for everyone. This can either mean to assist in laying out and planning plants or cleaning water with products that do not harm the enviroment or any human. Any way to obtain clean water and enlargen accessibility of clean water is our goal!

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Strategic planning

In its present day state the Company employs around 1,340 people, with a strategic plan in place to downsize its work force to 1,200 people by 2022. This will represent an effort of around 20 percent of the global FTE over a 10year period of time. “We put a strategic plan in place five years ago, with two very specific targets in mind,” continues Smit. “Initially the two targets seemed to be in contradiction of each other, however, they have come together over the years as part of the bigger picture for our Company. “The first objective was about investing heavily in both people and facilities, with the average age of our pipe-network currently at around 56 years old. We saw the need to invest in the renewal of our facilities and production/distribution networks.” The Company has set fixed targets of approximately 100 million per year for its investment pipeline and facilities ocated in the southern region of Belgium, Societe Wallone des Eaux (SWDE) has a rich history in the area that has led it to become a recognised industry leader, with a reputation for excellence. The Company serves a large territory and has been doing so since it was formed as a National Company in the 80s, when it was known as the Belgium Water National Company. Shortly after SWDE was in need of rejuvenation, and this gave life to its new name and new outlook on conducting business in the region. SWDE was formed under strict regulations that would ensure it best served the people of the region, and due to this its present day state sees the Company supply one million drinking water connections through to approximately 2.3 million people. “It is important to note that we are

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Committed to fixed targets

working solely within the drinking water sector,” explains Eric Smit, Board Member of the Executive Committee. “Everything related to the sanitation of water and wastewater is something that we do not involve ourselves in, although it is important to what we do and the way we are able to run our day-to-day operations.”

allowing it to carry out the required work to a high standard. Smit adds: “Our second objective for the strategy involves finding ways to keep our water bills at a sustainably affordable price for our customers, which has always been our aim. We have set our target on achieving an average of 0.5 percent of a household budget to be spent on drinking water.”

CLEAN WATER – The Liquid Force of our Lives • Clean and safe water is vital for everyday life • Every living being requires water to grow and to reproduce • Water is a primordial necessity for health, hygiene, and the productivity of our community Approximately 50 years ago, the common perception was that water was a limitless resource, but this perception did not take into consideration the fast growth of our population and our changing eating habits. On the contrary, only three percent of all the earth’s water is fresh water and 97 percent is inconsumable salt water. Roughly more than two-thirds of this fresh water is contained in our frozen glaciers and polar ice caps. The approximately remaining third of unfrozen freshwater is found mainly as groundwater, with only a small fraction of this being present above ground. Freshwater is a renewable resource, yet the world’s supply of groundwater is steadily decreasing. The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights has established a foundation of “5 core attributes for water security and sustainability”. They have declared: “The human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible, and affordable water for personal and domestic use.” This sounds great; however, the reality is very different! More than three million people die annually due to clean water scarcity! What can we do to enforce this declaration? The statement that “there is enough water

for everyone” is difficult to stomach when you know the hard facts! More than three million people die every year in developing countries, mainly children under five years of age, due to water pollution and water scarcity. What can we say to a mother who has no clean water and has to helplessly watch her children die: “It is government’s fault?!” Pointing fingers will not be the solution! Being a part of the solution! How can we, as the Dr. Nähring Water Treatment GmbH, be a part of the solution of this ever-increasing and urgent problem? We desire to assist developing countries as well as all other countries to secure the sustainability of their clean drinking water. We will have to: • Achieve primary wastewater treatment • Carefully analyse wastewater outfall with the purpose of decreasing its impact on our drinking water and ecosystems • Share our knowledge and technology; our knowledge of cost-effective wastewater and water treatment systems • Reduce our water consumption, especially in developed countries • Increase protection of ecosystems, especially wetlands and riparian zones God has given us a wonderful blue planet! Let’s collaborate and team up to preserve it for our future generations! Marcy Nähring Dr Nähring Water Treatment GmbH

T +49 711 914 58 471-73 F +49 711 914 584 75 E marcy.naehring@dr-naehring.de

www.dr-naehring.de

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Keeping water costs reasonable, via innovation and investment

This aim is a part of the management agreement that links the Company to the Walloon Region in which it operates, with the main obligations based on keeping annual expenses at a reasonable level. Smit states: “In summary, our operational strategy for the future of the Company is based on two conditions; keeping the cost of water at a reasonable level, while also guaranteeing a significant level of investment and renewal of our networks within the region. That will be achieved through a substantial driving down of our overall running costs by around 15 percent over a 10-year period of time.” In the past SWDE has achieved success with thanks to the close monitoring of its operational strategies. For example, leading up to 2016 the Company worked on the simplification of its management structure through the reorganisation of its production and distribution activities and making room for lean management.

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“This allowed the management team and key players in the field to work closely together using our new management model,” Smit describes. “We were able to redefine the operational processes, which gave us more flexibility in other areas of the business to reconsider how we were organising our activities.” When the Company decided to approach the subject of its strategic plan for 2022, opinions were very positive about the targets being set thanks to past experiences in this area. Smit continues: “Our aims are always reasonable but ambitious and what better proof of our success than winning a prize for the Organisation Publique de l’Année (Public Organisation of the Year) in 2016.”

Key philosophies

In order to meet with the aforementioned strategic plan, SWDE created seven core priority projects to aid it during this time.

Eric van Nispen

onderware is an industrial software editor, inventor in 1987 of the first Windows-based industrial supervisory system, and delivering nowadays a complete portfolio of open, scalable, easy-to-use, secure and versatile industrial software solutions empowering people to connect, control, understand, and optimise their operations. Wonderware Benelux B.V. is the exclusive distributor and certified training and support centre of Wonderware in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, acting since 1996 with an experienced team of support engineers and a certified network of system integrators. Water production facilities generally suffer from a lack of homogeneity in their automation design and supervision. They are so made complex to manage, maintain and troubleshoot and the management team does not always have total control. The risks of incidents are therefore important and the resolution time of these increased. In this context, SWDE has defined standards (hardware and software) for its production facilities in its R&D programmes, from the sensor or the equipment to the supervision and integration systems to drastically reduce development costs, error risks of, and to control the entire automation pyramid. SWDE aims to harmonise its facilities (four dam reservoirs, seven production centers, 1,000-plus production water pumping sites) and to supervise them via a new centralised system installed in two central dispatches. This project is carried out as part of the replacement of facilities whose technology is ageing, or outdated, but also with the aim of reducing maintenance and investment costs while allowing the appropriation of the management and maintenance of these facilities by the operating staff.

A methodology and different tools have been developed by SWDE to achieve a high level of control of both hardware and software installations. In 2010, SWDE launched a European open tendering for the replacement of its global supervision system of its production and transport facilities. At the end of a rigorous selection marathon which took almost two years, Wonderware was finally selected as the sole and global partner among seven bidders. Wonderware’s references in industrial and infrastructure applications have demonstrated the real capabilities of the solution. Over the years, Wonderware has become a key partner for SWDE to achieve its goals. SWDE indeed needs an object-oriented system, allowing the implementation of standardisation at all levels. Since investments are made for many years, sustainability, flexibility and scalability are essential. Wonderware does not limit the size of developments and allows to adapt to the organisational vision of SWDE while allowing to link strategic enterprise applications (Wonderware, SAP, GIS, Unilab). Key benefits are: • Harmonisation at all levels • Effective, reliable, resource-efficient application base • Fast and easy integration and maintenance by SWDE teams • Architecture integration with other applications • Cost reduction

T +32 (0) 3 328 07 40 (Belgium) T +31 (0) 76 579 41 00 (The Netherlands)

www.wonderware-benelux.com

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AVK BELGIUM NV

VK Belgium NV is a supplier for the main utility companies and contractors in Belgium and Luxembourg. The Company is part of the AVK Group, a worldwide renowned producer of high quality valves, hydrants, and accessories for the water and gas distribution network, sewage treatment, fire protection and industrial applications. The Company’s products are designed to the major international standards and are ISO, OHSAS and GSK certified.

A shared vision, individual commitment, and collective discipline

Read more on:

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The first of these projects involved the lean reorganisation of both its activities and management team, becoming one of the key philosophies of the Company and a great contributor to its recent success in the industry. This required a large-scale cultural change within SWDE, which so far has been incredibly successful due to the efforts of each member of staff involved. “Linking in nicely with our lean management restructuring process, we have also worked on becoming more agile in terms of our HR management,” explains Smit. “We have come from a dominantly top-down culture of management, which we have had to change quite dramatically.” Moving on from the management structure within the Company, it has also placed a focus on technical projects and securing water supply for the territory in terms of both quantity and quality. Smit states: “We had to question how we would be able to reinforce water supply across the territory, while

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also safeguarding the supplies for both the customer and industry. “We have also had to look into getting more efficiency in other areas of our business; including our telemetry and telemanagement information systems. As in all industries, this is becoming increasingly important to both the safety and efficiency of our business, which has also aided us in our fifth philosophy to improve our network performance in terms of monitoring losses.” The sixth philosophy in the SWDE’s strategic plan involves the improvement of knowledge in asset management, which is incredibly important to its investment prospects. Smit adds: “We realised that if you spend money in the wrong place at the wrong time, it will be to no avail and therefore asset management is a key issue for us to prioritise our investments renewals.” Lastly the importance of interactivity with the customer and providing a

water supply

waste water

fire protection

EME

gas supply

industrial valves

AVK Belgium NV/SA www.avkvalves.be info@avkvalves.be

more customer-centric service has been brought to the fore, starting with a push for a reshape of its website. “We have realised that it is easier for our customers to get in touch with us on a website, and recent interactivity studies have found that more than a third of our customers have created an account and are connected to us via either the website or social media channels,” explains Smit. “This is having a direct impact on our outgoings, with thanks to the reduction of calls and costs relating to mailing and paperwork.”

Individual commitment and collective discipline

In its recent history SWDE’s operation management was divided between its various independent branches, which was done to align with the direct legacy of the Company’s former regional offices. From that point onwards it was able to move from a regionally-based structure to an organisation built upon the

We are proud of the developments we are seeing at present, making positive changes and delivering on our planned results such as reducing the water losses previously seen on the networks

varying skills and occupations such as distribution, sales and production. “As the years have passed our operational strategy has become increasingly transversal,” continues Smit. “With thanks to our new organisational framework, our facilities located across Wallonia all share unified aims, employ the same resources and applying the same working methods.” All of the developments made by the Company in recent years have been carried out in a relatively calm social climate, enabling SWDE to successfully carry out projects to a set time scale. “We are proud of the developments we are seeing at present, making positive changes and delivering on our planned results such as reducing the water losses previously seen on the networks,” concludes Smit. “This confidence has allowed us to be more creative, innovative and subsequently more successful, taking our shared vision, individual commitment and collective discipline to the next level.”

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Société Wallonne des Eaux Rue de la Concorde 41 4800 Verviers Belgium Tel: +32 87 87 87 87 benoit.moulin@swde.be