Tangible Outcomes To Date

As we prepared the latest progress report update for Project Sammaan, some key insights and learnings, and corresponding milestones achieved, emerged that we wanted to share.

While the most tangible outcomes on this project in terms of operational toilets are still a few months away, the progress made in this last reporting period puts the project on a much firmer ground. This has been possible because we were able to streamline internal systems and establish a much better understanding and collaboration between various stakeholders.

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Architectural Design & Tender Progress

The last month has been exceptional in terms of progress of the architectural work. The deadlines for Project Sammann have always been challenging, but this time the work was fourfold and the deadline was even tighter.

Earlier we submitted tender and good for construction drawings (GFCs) for the Public Toilets, which were six designs covering 27 sites. This time for the community toilets (CTs) in Cuttack and Bhubaneswar we had 14 designs covering 32 and 43 sites, respectively, with the same stringent deadline as with the Public Toilets. On top of that, the whole process was delayed by two weeks due to various reasons. However, Anagram took the responsibility to bring the whole project back on track.

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Sammaan’s Architectural Design Principles

Building off of site visits and research work shared by our partners, we observed that, in the current scenario, the toilets were considered as a zone of filth. As such they were misused, making it unsafe, particularly for women and children. There was a major need to upgrade the experience of visiting a Public/ Community toilet.

Therefore, our designs were formulated on the basis of following principles:

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Menstrual Waste Incineration

As we’ve written about rather extensively, Project Sammaan can be viewed as the implementation phase that builds off of insights gleaned from the year-long research study of India’s urban sanitation facilities, the “Potty Project”. Part of this study involved researching the architectural infrastructure of existing facilities to evaluate where problems were arising and what could be done to alleviate them.

One such area of exploration revolved around menstrual waste disposal and the options that were made available to women and girls. Unfortunately, we found that most facilities do not provide mechanisms for disposal of menstrual waste, nor do they provide communications interventions that foster awareness around sanitary practices regarding menstrual hygiene. As a result, many toilets are blocked by pads and towels women attempted to flush and the facility grounds are littered with used sanitary towels. In several instances, toilet booths were blocked and rendered useless due to sanitary pads being dumped in there.

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Tender Update from Anagram

It’s that time again – to transform our architectural designs into tender documents.

Given our previous experience with the public toilet’s tender documents, we have learnt that developing a tender can be as challenging, if not much more, than the actual architectural design. Since it involves inputs from several consultants working on different elements of the design, it can lead to delays which can impact the final deadline for tender documents.

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Architecture Update

Anagram Architects comprises the architectural design team of Project Samman and, as such, is responsible for providing detailed architectural designs for both Public and Community toilets in Cuttack and Bhubaneswar. Our role involves understanding the existing sanitation scenario in the two cities and providing innovative design solutions to reduce the prevalent practice of open-defecation.

For this, initial site visits were made to understand the user preferences and reasons behind the failure of existing toilet designs. This was followed by a series of workshops, which helped in evolving a preliminary design framework.

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DEWATS Evaluation Trip to Nagpur

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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Architecture & Design

Potty Project provided a great deal of detail regarding issues around design that, if improved, could facilitate greater adoption rates of facilities by the communities they serve, and, consequently, reduce instances of open-defecation in these areas.

There will be two broad facility types:

  1. Base Layer: facilities that will include only toilet stalls, menstrual waste incinerators, and handwashing stations.

  2. Enhanced Layer: In addition to the base layer features, these facilities will also have bathing stalls, clothes-washing stations, and retail spaces.

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Project Partner Profile: Anagram Architects

This is a series of posts that shares more about the project partners and the important roles each plays

At its most basic level, Project Sammaan will provide functional sanitation facilities to slum communities that desperately need them. As such, the insights and learnings that led to the development of the project’s interventions need to be translated into brick-and-mortar buildings, meaning that an architectural firm, particularly one with a keen sense of function as well as form, is vital.

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Sewage Issue Primer

Apart from the varied insights around user behavior that the Potty Project research afforded us, we have learned that sewage and water service provisioning are also key factors ensuring the prolonged operation of facilities.

We decided early on that our designs needed to use a ‘septic tank’. This stemmed from the challenges affecting cities similar to our pilot locations in regards to sewerage access: Bhubaneswar has only a limited system while Cuttack lacks one altogether. The common practice in these instances is to couple an independent waste storage tank with a supporting bore well, for water requirements.

We observed a number of reasons for toilet facility failure due to sewage issues:

1. Lack of adequate capacity planning: In many toilets requiring on-site storage and evacuation, capacities weren’t planned appropriately. Inadequate frequency of vacuum truck evacuation caused systems to break down as the tanks flooded with excess waste water.

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