I was talking to a civil engineer returning home from a water reclamation project in Honduras. A college was working in partnership with a little town that had lost their water system during the last string of hurricanes. They worked for a year and were able to bring one tank online. Everyone high fived, the crew left, and the town’s people started to operate the system.
The team of engineers returned six months later to bring the other tanks on line, only to find that the first tank had been contaminated. A year’s worth of work was destroyed, the town was still without fresh water, and everyone had to start over. While the initial tank was fully functional, the town crew was not adequately trained; simple, usable manuals were not created; and a monitoring system was not implemented. There were no early warnings and in a six month time period, all gains were lost.
Everyone was so excited about the EVENT…they forgot to think about creating a sustainable program.
Yes, they trained the crew BUT they did not monitor after the fact to ensure the crew had mastered the new skill set.
Yes, they created technical manuals BUT they did not monitor to ensure that everyone could use the manuals.
Nope, they did not think about implementing a simple monitoring system that would detect early warning signs related to the performance of the crew.
They didn’t really think about making the system sustainable—and they lost a lot.
Is your system sustainable?
