Vietnamese water utility improvements continue
Posted 12 July 2018
Vietnam’s urban water sector is now seeing improved water and wastewater services delivered to almost 17 million customers under the Australian Water Association’s
Vietnam – Australia Water Utility Improvement Program (WUIP, formerly known as Twinning). The program, which is supported by the
Australian Water Partnership (AWP), has enabled the transfer of knowledge and expertise between five Australian and five Vietnamese water utilities to improve water service delivery. These utilities include:
• Son La Water Company – Cairns Regional Council, Water and Waste
• Saigon Water Corporation – Seqwater
• Binh Duong Water Company – Wannon Water
• Phu Tho Water Company – Coliban Water
• Hue Water Company – Western Australia Water Corporation
The utilities involved presented on the outcomes and activity highlights from the program to date at the WUIP workshop at Ozwater’18 that attracted over 80 participants. These include:
- Improved capacity of the five Vietnamese water utilities to deliver improved water services for over 10,681,765 customers of Ho Chi Minh City, Son La, Hue, Binh Duong and Phu Tho.
- Productive working relationships established between the participating WUIP practitioners and between the five Australian and Vietnamese water utilities leading to enhanced reputation of the Australian water sector in Vietnam.
- Professional development of staff from Australian water utilities through gaining international experience and appreciation for Vietnamese culture and water sector, leading to an increase in job satisfaction and staff retention.
- Improvements across all five Vietnamese utilities over the course of the program in areas of:
o Non-revenue water
o Water quality compliance
o Business planning
o Human resource planning and customer engagement
o Asset management
- Transfer and use of tools and knowledge from Australia to Vietnam to support:
o Practical approaches to support asset management capabilities
o Development and implementation of water quality safety plans
o Implementation of risk management approaches to water quality management
o Introduction and trialing of technologies to reduce non-revenue water
o Enhanced customer and community engagement
o HR and business planning protocols
- The five Vietnamese utilities and the Vietnam Water Supply Association (VWSA) are now delivering training programs across Vietnam’s urban water sector extending the lessons learnt and tools transferred from the Australian utilities.
With funding from AWP to extend the program from 18 months to 3 years, the utilities are now focused on the implementation of their action plans to include additional visits by both Australian and Vietnamese utilities.