Week that Was – April 16th

Project Management

Last week was quite a happening time in the field. We had productive meetings with both municipality commissioners about the project’s progress.

In Cuttack, we had the final discussion about the selection of the remaining sites. The Mayor, Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner and the head of the committee that approves the sites were present and they shared their requirements about site selection. Accordingly, we have shortlisted the final sites where the construction will begin.

In Bhubaneswar, we shared with the commissioner the problems we are facing in terms of identifying enough public and community sites for construction; we need additional public and community sites for construction and research. Strategies for quickening the land identification process were discussed with appropriate representatives.

Simultaneously, we also started discussions on finalizing the best tendering option for toilet construction. Since quality is the main criteria for vendor selection, we are exploring Quality Based Selection (QBS) and Quality and Cost Based Selection (QCBS). A decision will be made in the coming weeks.

Communications

The bulk of our efforts were invested in going live with the blog. Securing hosting, sharpening CSS, retooling PHP, cropping photos, editing posts and much more took us from Monday to Friday in a flash. Late Friday evening, sitting on the balcony of our beautiful Hauz Khas studio, we were finally ready to go live. With the cursor poised over the “Publish” button, gray clouds came rolling into view over the adjacent Deer Park. As a “click” issued from the mouse, so too did a “zap” from the power outlet. Literally and figuratively powerless, we called it a night and decided to launch the next week.

And hooray! Even a day delay can’t hold back our excitement on launching this blog. We truly hope you will enjoy the glimpse into each team member’s unique perspective on the experience of Project Sammaan.

Additionally, we crafted a timeline for the homestay video after perusing the 3+ hours of footage we shot. There’s some really great material and it gives a great sense of what the community we stayed in is like, while also capturing people’s daily lives. The editing process is going to be lengthy, but we’ll hopefully have that video to share in the coming weeks.

Research & Design

The government and community feedback that we received from the Sketch Design 1 phase was synthesized and shared internally. Some of the commentary had implications for our floor plans and minor revisions are being made.

We are preparing crowdsourced innovation briefs around 1-2 design challenges concerning certain features within the facility (such as waste management). These briefs will be seeded at leading architectural and design schools across the world

Additionally, the brand development brief preparations have just begun and work on the “Potty Lab” started.