Workstream Activities: Week of 11/18/13
Last week we were able to get the Public Toilet tender released in Bhubaneswar which allowed us to shift the focus to the Community Toilets in both pilot cities. The municipal corporations of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack require an incredible amount of documentation to push the tender process forward: over 2,500 pages of materials were submitted to the CMC and nearly double that amount will be submitted to the BMC this week. (We’ve assembled individual booklets for each of the 92 Community Toilets across both cities; Arkitechno has taken the lead in this with a lot of support coming from Anagram Architects).
The CMC engineering department is literally signing off on every single page of these booklets before sending them to the Chief Engineer based here in Bhubaneswar. Once the Chief Engineer reviews and approves these, we will get the technical sanction and, according to the Cuttack City Engineer, the tender will immediately be released.
Arkitechno is working with the BMC engineers to prepare the 60 individual booklets they’ve requested in order to push for the technical sanction. In parallel to this, CTRAN is working to get these facilities approved by the Public Health and Standing Committees. This approval is required prior to receiving technical sanction, which, in turn, is needed before the tender can be released to the public for bidding.
With all of this in mind, the workstreams for each partner are primarily focused on providing any and all materials the government officials require to expedite the tendering process.
Anagram Architects
- Adding additional detailing to the working drawings and responding to comments from Arkitechno regarding the same
- Assisting Arkitechno and CTRAN with facilitating the tendering process at both the BMC and CMC
Arkitechno
- Provide technical assistance to the engineering departments at the BMC and CMC to expedite the tendering process
- Reviewing and commenting on Anagram’s working drawings
- Completing and submitting the 60 Community Toilet booklets for the BMC, and reviewing such with the engineers
Codesign
- Continuing work revising the Sammaan identity; will present the updated work to Quicksand representatives next week
- Reviewing and incorporating feedback regarding facility signage content
CTRAN
- Ensuring that the CMC engineers complete signing the Community Toilet documentation for submission to the Chief Engineer for review, approval, and technical sanction
- Interfacing with the BMC to ensure approval is granted by the Public Health and Standing Committees within the week
- Facilitating interactions between the BMC engineers and Arkitechno for expediting the Community Toilet tender release
J-PAL
- Discussing the various software interventions being proposed with the Principal Investigators
- Detailing out the various pricing and habit formation experiments
Quicksand
- Assisting Arkitechno and CTRAN in pushing the CT tenders in both cities
- Meeting with Mr. Vishal Dev of the BDA to discuss project developments and solicit his assistance in expediting the Community Toilet tender process, while also interviewing him for the Yale University School of Management case study
- Meeting with CMC engineers to follow up on the CT tender
- Updating various communications channels (e.g., issuing press release for Public Toilet tender release, designing and printing the monthly newsletter, adding blog posts to the website, etc.)