Tender Released in Cuttack

The Sammaan team ended the first month of 2014 by achieving another significant milestone: the tender for the 32 Community Toilets in Cuttack has been released! This ends a nearly year-long process that was fraught with various hurdles, but one that was also rich in learnings that will enrich the project’s toolkit and, hopefully, help other organizations working in the field avoid the same missteps and challenges that we encountered.

As I wrote in the post about the release of the Public Toilet tenders in Bhubaneswar, the various teams working on Sammaan are inspired by its innovative approach to addressing open-defecation, generally, and fixing the urban slum sanitation facility model, specifically, with layers upon layers of innovation that over everything from the design of the physical infrastructure to the business models and demand-generation activities employed to ensure increased, and sustained, adoption rates amongst users.

In focusing specifically on Cuttack, what’s also served as considerable motivation is the magnitude of the project’s inevitable footprint on the city: Project Sammaan will double the number of community sanitation facilities serving its slum communities. Furthermore, the Sammaan facilities will do more than just provide “more”, they will provide “better”, with some of the facilities having additional amenities such as bathing and clothes-washing stations, as well as menstrual waste incinerators within the ladies stalls, and the facility designs account for natural ventilation and improved airflow, amongst other considerations.

Again, the project has very much been a learning process for all of the partners and stakeholders, as is the case with any new initiative seeking to “break the mold” and re-think a tried and true, if largely unsuccessful, manner of doing things. Accomplishing this has required the involvement of a multitude of partners whose expertise has helped inform and improve the process. Perhaps most significant amongst these has been the local municipal corporations tasked with improving the quality of life for the citizens of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack.

As compared to a standard infrastructural project (e.g., building a bridge) that has been done before and, therefore, has a tried-and-true method for evaluation and approval, Project Sammaan’s facilities involve “reinventing the wheel” a little bit. As such, there is no baseline for comparison, aside from the failed facilities whose design we’re improving upon in order to make our facilities more viable, sustainable, user-friendly, and environmentally sound. Moving beyond these requires forward-thinking partners within the local government that are willing to step out of their comfort zone a bit and try something new.

In Cuttack, we are fortunate to work with representatives that embody just this level of thinking, and could not have gotten as far as we have without their partnership. CMC Commissioner Mr. Gyana Das, City Engineer Mr. Umakanta Garnaik, Executive Engineer Mr. Dhiren Prusty, and Assistant Engineer Mr. N.K. Pal, amongst others, have been integral in moving Sammaan forward and ensuring that the at-risk populations in Cuttack’s slums receive the facilities they need.

The process took longer than the team anticipated, but as the adage goes, “nothing good in life comes easy.” The tender has been announced in various newspapers and the tender documents will be available on the CMC website for interested contractors to access and prepare their bid documents beginning on February 10th.

Here is the link to the press release for media interested in covering the story.