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.

Some of the activities led by Quicksand in this period were:

  • Completion of all designs – architectural and sewage, brand design in progress: The last reporting period was particularly important from a design perspective as design efforts focused on community toilets. While the preceding design activities and the tendering of public toilets laid the foundation for community toilets, most of the designs had to be considered afresh because of a fundamentally different target group, and hence the need for a different user experience. The project team was able to successfully conclude the design of toilets across multiple facets including:
    • Toilet building
    • Sewage management
    • Branding and its various manifests including name, visual language and signages
    • The focus for the remainder of the project is now going to be on tendering and construction.
  • Securing funding commitment from CMC / BMC: As discussed in the previous section, this has been a major achievement for this reporting period. CMC has already secured a written approval on funds and BMC has approved the estimates costs for construction from its own budgets. Given the fundamentally different constraints under which toilets had to be designed, the cost of construction Increased significantly from the initial agreement between Quicksand, JPAL and the city governments.
  • Sewage management system: Another development in this reporting period that has a significant long term impact on the sustainability of hardware designs is the sewage management system. From a public health perspective, absence of an effective sewage management system posed serious problems for the project but on the flipside, also paved the way for some of the more innovative on site treatment technologies to be presented and demonstrated to government. In addition to ensuring that functionality of our toilets will not be compromised, this has more a strategic implication on the manner in which on-site treatment options can be considered as part of city sanitation plans. Successful deployment of these technologies at Bhubaneswar and Cuttack has a direct impact on the replication of these technologies in other cities.
  • Robust communication platform:  An important work stream established in the current reporting period has been that of communication and wider project dissemination. This is especially significant given the interdependencies between multiple stakeholders on the project, and the need for effective collaboration between all partners. The communication strategy developed in this period comprises of the following outputs:
    • Monthly project newsletters (distributed to all stakeholders)
    • Project website with an active blog section (contributed from partners)
    • First draft of the technical and design guidelines document which will eventually dovetail into the toolkit
    • Project Sammaan’s listing on Susana, widening the reach of the project to the global community
    • Quicksand along with Prof. Rodrigo Canales has begun work on a raw case study on Project Sammaan for Yale School of Management focusing on user centered design and design led innovations

Leave a Reply