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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Project Sammaan aims to rethink urban sanitation services by applying holistic, systems-based thinking and principles informed by user-centered design insights from the field. These improvements are broadly categorized into four “Pillars of Innovation”:

• Business Models

• Operations & Maintenance models

• Architecture & Infrastructure Design

• Branding & Communications

The Branding & Communications stream, led by Codesign, aims to develop and deploy a system of improved messaging, including the branding of the facilities themselves, as well as the system of visuals (signage, use of color, etc.) throughout the Project Sammaan facilities.

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The construction vendors are identified through an exhaustive tendering process managed by Feedback Foundation. The tendering process is administered by the local governments and it is supported by the project team. It is important for the project team to understand the documents that need to be submitted along with the approvals required so that the process is completed within project’s timeline.

Feedback Foundation interfaced with the BMC engineering team to obtain more details on the tendering process and to review the tender documents that had already been prepared. They also collaborated with Anagram Architects on incorporating the facility design changes suggested by the engineering team. These efforts help to ensure that the process is completed in a timely manner with all requisite approvals in place.

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Early on in the project, there had already been an effort to create an identity and voice for Project Sammaan, with the aim to bring together the different streams of work and thought, while giving a unified face to the project as a whole.

There are two distinct components within the framework of the larger project — one that is internal facing, representative of a collaborative consortium of stakeholders rethinking sanitation systems (i.e. Sammaan), and the second, a user-facing, sanitation system prototype borne out of the collaborative effort of Project Sammaan. The question that loomed large at the beginning of the branding stream was whether there was a need for a second brand for the user-facing sanitation system prototype. To understand this, we examined key features for both across categories of target user group, objectives, drivers/motivators and the intended role of brand identity.

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For a large infrastructure project of this nature, multiple stakeholders are a given. Within this dynamic there is an overall project objective, but also individual organizational goals that need to be taken into consideration and addressed. At times, these individual mandates can conflict with the project’s overall goals with one team’s workstream impacted by the needs of another’s.

An example of this can be found in the innovation and design mandates. Imperative for some of the partners, these directives require considerable and conscientious ideation. This alone can be seen by stakeholders with limited understanding of the complexities and intricacies of design innovation as a delay.

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Sewage management systems are a necessary part of the sanitation puzzle and potentially a big failure point from a public health perspective. From a government perspective, scale of solution is an imperative. Existing statutes and cost constraints make it extremely difficult to experiment with new, untested technologies.

As such, waste management is a key component to Project Sammaan as shortcomings in this have frequently been the cause of failures in other facilities and improper storage and disposal of waste could lead to worsening present conditions and not improving them.

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Project Sammaan’s long-term goal is to create a replicable, successful sanitation model that can be adapted by cities throughout South Asia and beyond.

In order to quantify the impact of this initiative, rigorous evaluation needs to occur. However, the methodology of this assessment requires a considerable sample size, meaning that the interventions, irrespective of their success rates, will be rolled out on a massive scale. It’s not merely one or two facilities, but well over 100 in dozens of communities; a considerable footprint to be certain.

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While Project Sammaan is the project’s name, the sanitation facilities we design and build will carry their own brand identity.

It’s important to brand these sanitation facilities appropriately to ensure optimal adoption rates amongst end users in the communities, a feeling of professionalism in the people who run these facilities, and brand recall amongst stakeholders in the government and other organizations working in this sector to maximize its impact.

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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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Potty Project research led to insights around opportunities to improve sanitation service delivery and, consequently, end-user perceptions around sanitary practices. These learnings were cased in four “pillars of innovation”: Operations & Maintenance, Branding Communications, Architectural Infrastructure, and Business Models.

1. O&M

Community sanitation facilities are in an ever-deteriorating physical state with derelict toilet hardware, broken doors or tiles, and accumulating layers of filth seeming an inevitable end for most. Overcoming people’s perceptions around participation in cleaning and maintaining these toilets will be a key challenge.

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