I spent the past 20 months with Sammaan both as a full-time project manager and a part-time consultant, and have just disengaged from the initiative.

This time has helped me to understand the challenges in implementing large-scale innovations in government organisations while getting the firsthand experience of looking at the state of sanitation facilities in Indian slums.

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A lot of my work in Project Sammaan revolves around building strategic relationships with the various government departments in the BMC, the CMC and the Government of Odisha.

Some of the key departments that I interact regularly are:

Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC): BMC is one of the partners of Project Sammaan and is headed by the Mayor, who is an elected representative. From the administrative side, BMC is headed by the Commissioner; from Sammaan side, we have monthly review meetings of the project with the Commissioner.

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Project Sammaan is a dynamic project with multiple deliverables at any time. Currently, the team is working on the following:

Release of tenders for construction of 27 Public Toilets: The tender documents for Public Toilets were submitted in the last week of March 2013. After that, the team worked with BMC to obtain technical sanctioning and approval from the H&UD department. However, the tenders are stuck due to delays in land approvals and differences in modalities of vendor selection between the BMC and the H&UD department; the team is working with both in an effort to fast-track the process.

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A significant part of funds for toilet construction in Project Sammaan comes from the government. This entails following a transparent, and government-approved, selection process (a.k.a tendering) for the identification of contractors who will build the Project Sammaan toilets. The selection process should be legally tenable and will be subjected to public scrutiny. Any mishandling of this process will have serious implications on the project timelines and can put the entire project at standstill.  Thus it is incumbent on Project Sammaan to ensure that the entire tendering process is handled with care.

Having understood the importance of tendering, the team brought in professional firms to handle the entire tendering process: Feedback Foundation handled the tendering for 27 public toilets in Bhubaneswar and Arkitechno will handle the tendering for 92 community toilets in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack.

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Project Sammaan is a multi-partner, long-term, and large-scale implementation project. At any time there are at least 7 to 8 different partners working simultaneously on several milestones. Due to this, it is very crucial to plan the activities well in advance to ensure these achievements happen in a timely manner. This helps to measure the project progress tangibly and also smoothes coordination among the partners.

To ensure efficient and effective planning, the project is divided into 3 different batches:

• Batch 1 – 27 Public Toilets in Bhubaneswar
• Batch 2 – 32 Community Toilets in Cuttack
• Batch 3 – 60 Community Toilets in Bhubaneswar

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I had a fairly informative and productive trip to Nagpur on 15th & 16th May along with various Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation officials. We joined a local Center for DEWATS Dissemination (CDD) team to visit various DEWATS (Decentralized Wastewater Treatment Systems) sites for possible inclusion in the Project Sammaan facilities.

BMC was represented by Ms Sumita Behera (Land Recovery Officer), Mr. Ratindra Narayan Mallick (Executive Engineer) and Mr. Surath Kumar Sahoo (Junior Engineer). Satchit (Regional co-ordinator) and Sekhar (Sr. Engineer) accompanied us from CDD.

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With an aspiring and young population, there is a growing demand from the citizens and government officials alike to provide quality basic services like sanitation. India is rapidly urbanizing and this is putting a huge strain on the existing sanitation facilities, especially in urban slums.

The future of sanitation in India involves making a paradigm shift in thinking and leapfrogging in creating sanitation infrastructure like toilets and supporting sewerage systems. This requires driving initiatives like Project Sammaan and scaling them up rapidly to benefit millions of Indians who don’t have access to toilets.

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As the Central Project Manager for Project Sammaan, my responsibilities include managing workstreams of all the partners and providing strategic liaising with senior bureaucrats in both the BMC and CMC, as well as other government departments in Orissa.

The key objective of my role is to ensure that the project is completed within the planned timelines. I work towards enhancing the communication between various partners and between the project team through weekly calls and facilitating discussions among partners to sort out pending issues. I also manage the field activities of Quicksand, which includes coordination among field partners for site identification, site surveys and approvals.

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The land identification process for Project Sammaan is one of the most complex and exciting processes I have participated in. The excitement comes from the challenge of meeting the deadlines within multiple constraints; the complexity comes from the task of identifying at least 160 sites within 2 months.

Visiting a community in Cuttack, Bhubaneswar.

There are multiple steps taken before selecting a site:

• A member from J-PAL, a government surveyor and a Feedback Foundation associate visit proposed sites
• J-PAL decides whether the site fits into the scope of the project while Feedback Foundation works with the land department to get land details, including ownership information. (It should be noted that only government-owned sites with clear land details will be selected.)