Hello all, and happy Friday!

I wanted to take a moment to update the forum on progress being made with Project Sammaan as it has been some time.

After a long, arduous process of trying to identify contractors to construct the facilities through a public tendering, and multiple failed attempts at doing so, we have partnered with National Building Construction Corporation (NBCC). NBCC is a quasi-government agency that typically only takes on very large-scale projects. Thankfully, their senior representatives are very forward-thinking and concerned with helping to solve India's sanitation crisis. They will build all of the community sanitation facilities in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack, as well as the public toilets in Bhubaneswar, while also acting as the project management consultancy (PMC). The latter part is particularly important as having a PMC will hopefully help to ensure that the design principles are adhered to and the innovations being pushed forth in Sammaan will not be jeopardized; they will oversee the daily construction activities to ensure that those building the facilities are not deviating from any of the architectural drawings.

The construction of the facilities in Cuttack is due to kick off in the next few weeks, with those in Bhubaneswar following soon thereafter. The Commissioner of the Cuttack Municipal Corporation, Mr. Das, has set an August 31 deadline for completion of the 30+ facilities there. (On a personal note, Mr. Das has been an amazing advocate of not only Project Sammaan, but innovation in general; he is a true agent for change and should be considered for any future projects in the sanitation space as he is truly dedicated to helping the people of Cuttack).

We faced significant delays in getting to this point, but with any luck the ends will justify the means: our trials and tribulations will eventually lead to tens of thousands of people having a viable, safe, sustainable sanitation utility.

Hey SuSanA Forum members!

I wanted to thank all of you for the level of interest that's been expressed in Project Sammaan, our urban slum sanitation initiative being piloted in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack. We've received a lot of great feedback and the detailed questions that have come our way are most definitely appreciated.

In the interest of saving time, I've consolidated the responses to several individual queries into this post. (Some asked similar questions, so I figured it'd be in everyone's best interest to share the responses in this manner; create an FAQs of sorts).


Costing
In itself the cost per square feet of construction has been kept within market benchmarks and we have been mandated to use government approved rates for materials used. In terms of the utilities and feature, Sammaan toilets are significantly different from traditional public and community toilets on several fronts and hence the cost was expected to be higher than standalone toilets. The question is whether the additional utilities provided justify the cost - and that in some sense is also the research question being posed - does a multi-utility block drive higher uptake of toilets. If our hypotheses are proven correct, this would set a new benchmark for sustainable, well-functioning toilets in any case.

The fact that these decisions have been taken in collaboration with the government, ensures that this is sustainable when scaled up. These are budgets well within the means of government outlay for sanitation infrastructure development. I guess it's really a question of where, and on what, government spending should be prioritised.

Also, I wanted to shed some light on the discrepancy between the facility price listed in Ayush's presentation versus what I shared earlier in this forum thread. Ayush's cost of roughly US$116,000 was for a 12-seat Enhanced Layer facility. Whereas the prices I shared were the averages for Base Layer and Enhanced Layer across all typologies (i.e., 2-seat, 4-seat, 6-seat, 8-seat, 10-seat, 12-seat). The average prices are both accurate though what they are reflective of is different.


DEWATS
The cost of 6mn USD for 119 toilets includes the cost of treatment in at least 20% of the toilets which have a full scale DEWATS implementation (which in the case of 116K USD 12 seater toilet adds up to almost 30% of the total cost of construction).


O&M
The O&M model has not yet been designed - but our goal there is to make these toilets completely self-sustainable (without the need for subsidy). The government is in any case providing subsidy by taking care of land and CAPEX.

Dear all,

As a service to those people who don't have access to Youtube videos I am posting here a quick overview of what Ayush presented and the questions that followed during the third webinar that SEI organised on 7 November (see Arno's post about it here: forum.susana.org/forum/categories/139-ge...g-now-available#6312).

Ayush Chauhan was the first presenter in the webinar. He is based in Delhi, India and works for Quicksand together with Kevin Shane who has posted above. Quicksan and J-PAL are co-leading this large urban infrastructure project. J-PAL is well known for their rigorous impact assessment work.

The presentation of Ayush starts exactly here in the Youtube video:



Communal Sanitation Solutions for Urban Slums
by Ayush Chauhan, Quicksand Design, Delhi
Location: Orissa, India

The short presentation that he used for the webinar:



Two slides from the presentation as a visual input:






Some notes that I took while listening to his presentation:

• The name of their project (Sammaan) comes from the Hindi word for dignity & respect.
• They have been working on it for 2 years. Construction is due to start in one month.
• The project is about communal sanitation for urban slums.
• It was preceded by the "Potty project" which was a year long study to gather data on the situation of urban sanitation in India; this project was also funded by the BMGF. See here their very nice website with all the findings: www.pottyproject.in/
• Lack of faecal sludge management is a big reason for sanitation failure in Indian cities (he explained also the other factors that are leading to sanitation failure).
• The project is carried out in two cities in the East of the country, in the state of Orissa. The names of the cities are: Bhubaneswar and Cuttack.
• There will be 119 toilet blocks built: 87 community toielts, 27 public toilet blocks.
• The government (Municipal Corporation) is a key partner. This is a large infrastructure project. As shown in the slide above, the government is putting the lion share of the total costs in (USD 4.6 million) + USD 1.4 million from the BMGF.
• 60,000 people or more should benefit from this in the end.

This equates to 100 USD per person for the construction cost (is this a lot? seems like quite a bit me - given that treatment is not included in this cost, except for the 20% connected to DEWATS swee below; by the way, we didn't talk about O&M costs...)

Typical capital cost of one communal toilet block: 116,000 USD.

Only 20% of these toilets will be connected to DEWATS for treatment. The reason is that there is no precedence for DEWATS in the government systems in these towns, so there is some hesitation and lack of experience. All toilets were meant to be connected to sewer lines and a centralised treatment plant. See also question and answer below.

Questions:

(1)
Nelson Ekane asked: what are your lessons learnt?

Answer by Ayush:
"We are designing and planning with the government; with governement things start at a large scale; we are in effect prototyping at scale which is difficult... If we could do better staging, that would be helpful (but would take longer).
A real constraint with the government is: how much can you innovate?"

(2)
Sherina Munyana asked: What is the preferred option for payment by the users? Which is most popular?

Answer by Ayush:
"This is still under design right now. Some results from the previous Potty Project: For public toilets: pay per use (2-5 Rupies, depending if you want to use it just for defecation or also for bathing); no monthly payments schemes. For community toilets: pricing can be quite fickle. Possible pricing innovations: incentive based pricing (sliding scale); if a family is using the toilet more often than not, then the price that they have to pay actually decreases. We are experimenting with some pricing innovations."

(3)
Mark Illian and Francis de los Reyes asked: what is happening with the sewage or faecal sludge from the flush toilets? What is your faecal sludge management system? Are the toilets going to be connected to sewers or are you going to use vacuum tankers?

Answer by Ayush:

"The two cities have a city-wide sewer network which is currently being expanded (with centralised sewage treatment plant). In fact, both cities have grants and loans to build these city-wide networks. The planning was that there would be a sewer line which would be close to these communal toilets. But there are some delays and road blocks... So we had to find some interim solutions, such as DEWATS which we have now planned for 20% of the sites. We wanted DEWATS solutions for all the sites, but that couldn't happen. (we are working with CDD which is part of BORDA for the other 80% of toilets that will not be connected to DEWATS systems: they will get some form of sub-optimal sewage treatment: improved septic tank and settler; percolation trench; sludge removed with vacuum tanker)."

Thank you to Ayush and all the participants in this webinar for this in-depth discussion we had about this large project taking shape in India. I found it very interesting!

Greetings,
Elisabeth

Hello Mr. Biswal,

Thank you very much for your comments. I absolutely agree with you across the board, particularly in regards to capacity-building within the municipal corporations and the need for educational outreach amongst the host communities.

There is a clear and pervasive need to impart a level of understanding amongst community members on the health risks associated with open-defecation. Unfortunately, many people are faced with either no option at all due to a lack of any facility whatsoever, or to choose between defecating outside or in a toilet facility that is dysfunctional, dirty, or both. We met many end-users that pointed out the deplorable conditions of their toilet facilities and asked quite pointedly why they should use, and in most cases pay for, something like that when defecating outdoors is a far better alternative in terms of the experience. This opinion underlines not only the dire nature of urban sanitation for many users, particularly amongst slums, but also just how little information is being conveyed to them regarding the health implications of open-defecation.

Our grant is loosely defined by two mandates: to create sanitation facilities for urban slums that will reduce instances of open defecation, and to generate a toolkit that encapsulates learnings from the project and allow other organizations to replicate the model throughout India, South Asia, and beyond.

Accomplishing the first requires a complete re-imagining of urban sanitation facilities, from infrastructure and business models to outreach and support mechanisms. The need is not for more toilets, but better ones. They need to be sustainable in the long-term, easy to maintain to ensure clean and healthy environments within and around the facilities, they need to have fair pricing that allow for broader adoption rates, they need to take into consideration the needs of all users (men, women, children, those with different physical abilities, etc.), and their utility needs to be reinforced through education.

The second mandate, creating the toolkit, will allow this project to have an ever-increasing footprint. This project is really an exercise at prototyping at scale since these 119 facilities will be rigorously evaluated to validate the effectiveness of all interventions being employed. It's not sufficient to merely build one facility in one community and claim that it works. There needs to be a multitude of facilities in a variety of communities to be able to say what works and what doesn't. When done, this toolkit will allow others to employ what works and avoid the pitfalls of trial and error. Quite frankly, there are far too many people in need of effective sanitation solutions for us not to share our findings. Things such as this toolkit as well as this forum are a step in that direction.

One important aspect to note about our project is that the BMC and CMC are stakeholders in it. They are equal partners amongst all project participants and are beholden to provide not just utilities such as water, electricity, land, and waste management, but also an interface with the communities to address any issues with the facilities. We're working with them to create a project management office within both municipal corporations, and are conducting capacity-building activities to ensure they're able to maintain and service these facilities for years to come. After all, as we've all seen in these urban slum communities, there's plenty of toilets that have been built and then abandoned once they become dysfunctional simply because there are not the systems in place to report issues and rectify them.

There are many aspects of Sammaan that address the issues you've raised in your post and I thank you for doing so. I'd encourage you to visit our website (ProjectSammaan.com) and to continue the conversation. Engaging and conversing about sanitation here in India, and abroad, will build the awareness that is so needed in a sector that, in addressing, can remedy many societal problems affecting the world today.


Cheers!

Hiyo Miguel!

Good hearing from you, man! I hope all is well your way and all that goodness. Are you going to be at the Toilet Fair in Delhi this March? I'll be there presenting Sammaan; hope to see you there!

It's pretty challenging to give a rough cost by facility as each of the 119 had to be designed specifically for the site. Initially we had planned on creating a fixed design by typology (e.g., 2-seater, 4-seater...on up to 12-seater) for the base layer and enhanced layer and that's it. This would've meant a total of 12 designs. However, ground realities prevented this from being the case and we resorted to creating site-specific designs that all conformed to the same design principles (e.g., allowing for natural light and venitlation, using locally sourced materials, etc.) and featuring the same interventions (e.g., for enhanced layer facilities: bathing stalls, clothes-washing stations, etc.).

That said, I worked some Excel magic and came up with some rough costs. For the Base Layer facilities, the average cost is around 30 lakh rupees (around US$47,000); the enhanced layer facilities average out around 36 lakh rupees (roughly US$55,000).

With all this being said, we are just now getting approval to release the tenders and will commence construction in the coming months. The end cost of these very well may differ from the anticipated costs. Hopefully more so in the "less than" column than the "more than" one, haha.

Hopefully this helps. Please drop me a line off-channel if you need anything more detailed than this.

Hi Naomi!

My apologies for the delay in responding to you.

As part of the year-long ethnographic research study into urban sanitation Quicksand undertook, called the Potty Project (pottyproject.in), we found a glaring lack of consideration for women's menstrual hygiene needs. Toilet facilities were designed with parity in mind (e.g., 6 toilet stalls for men, 6 for women) with little or no deviation based on gender. We also found that, due to a lack of disposal options, many toilets were left unusable because drains were clogged or pipes broken as a result of women attempting to flush menstrual pads or rags. Worse yet, there were also instances in which these rags were stuffed into window lattice or simply thrown on the ground, thereby creating unsanitary conditions for further users.

Broaching such a taboo topic was tricky, to say the least, but we managed to assuage women's concerns a few ways. First and foremost, these discussions were led by female researchers and done so in all-female contexts, wherever possible. To initiate the conversations, rather than directly asking women to discuss their menstrual hygiene practices, our researchers discussed the topic in general terms: presenting healthy menstrual hygiene routines while also discussing certain misconceptions about menstruation that lead to unhygienic activities. From my conversations with the researchers, once the initial discomfort was overcome, women were fairly forthcoming in the discussions.

Demand generation activities are the purview of one of our partners, but I can broadly touch on them. Much like the initial research conducted, the intention is to engage with the communities that will be home to the Sammaan facilities to initially create awareness about the need for proper, hygienic menstrual hygiene practices. This will then be layered upon highlighting aspects of our facilities that will allow for these practices to take place.

As you said in your post, one of the most important, and simplest, fixes is providing a secure facility to ensure privacy. There will be gender-segregated entrances to the facilities, adequate door coverage and interior stall space, as well as locking mechanisms.

The additional, unique layer that we're adding to our facilities is in-stall menstrual waste incinerators. These are chutes that women simply drop their used rags or pads into, which are then fed into incinerators to destroy the waste. The heat is far enough removed from the stalls themselves to ensure safety for the users.

Thank you for sending along the link to your toolkit! It's a very valuable resource and I've forwarded the link onto our partners.

Best of luck in your work, and please do feel free to ask any additional questions. I promise I'll be better at responding in a more timely manner going forward!

If you have so far followed the discussion on Kevin's research project on communal sanitation solutions for urban slums then I would like to point out that:

Here is your chance to interact with Kevin (and two other grantees) live during the upcoming webinar hosted by SEI on this Thursday (7 Nov.) at 17:00 Sweden time. Some places are still left (with or without microphone rights, this depends), please see here for more information:

forum.susana.org/forum/categories/139-ge...nment-institute#6195

(If you miss the event live, you can view the recording on Youtube a few days later)

Hello Kevin.
I am a development processional from Bhubaneswar, Odisha. I am in Bhubaneswar since 1987.

Well, you have started various models to serve slum dwellers of Bhubaneswar & Cuttack with the help of BMC & CMC. Your models are great for acceptance by the community.

Now, to some extent open defecation has been stopped. But some are still crossing the limit and doing open defecation .They are not coming under the community's jurisdiction.Though there are various motivating schemes are framed in the project. This is continuing because of poor maintenance of the community toilet,Community leaders are not involved properly, irregular motivation & health education in the community, lack of cohesion & correlation among line departments, inability of local counselor on this programme , negligible or non interference of BMC & CMC administration , lack of a quality communication specialist on sanitation & interference of neighboring community or groups is badly necessary for the efficacy and sustainability of this programme.At the same time, there should be a dialogue with BMC or CMC administration, other line departments, other stakeholders, corporate sector,philanthropists,generous people, local leaders,local NGO/CBO to have quick concrete plan for open defecation area. So, that open defectors will not get space for their bad habits.

Please give your feedback.

Hello Kevin!

I was wondering if you could share your target construction cost per facility. This could serve as a good benchmark for other projects (such as ours). Hope you can share this with the community.

Regards,

Miguel

++++++++
Note by moderators: This post was made by a former user with the login name miguelmelgarejo who is no longer a member of this discussion forum.

By the way, we have recently uploaded a factsheet, powerpoint and further readings on menstrual hgyiene.
Find it here:
www.sswm.info/node/7236
Feel free to read, use and share.

Have a good one,

Naomi

Hi Kevin,

Hope you are all well and so does the project.

Great that you are bringing up the topic of menstrual hygiene in your project’s discussion forum – a quite sensitive and often taboo topic despite its importance!

I was wondering whether you have raised that topic when discussing with the communities and if so, what kind of reactions you got from the women living in the slums.
In which ways are menstrual hygiene needs incorporated in the toilet facility design (lockable doors, disposal options, availability of sanitary material/possibilities to wash out used sanitary cloths in private)?


I also got curious what kind of demand creation activities you are currently conducting/what other activities are planned? We have compiled some tools for demand creation in our Sustainable Sanitation and Water Management Toolbox: www.sswm.info/category/planning-process-tools/demand-creation

Cheers,

Naomi

Hello everyone!

We're trying something new with the Project Sammaan website (projectsammaan.com): featuring sanitation-related questions in the hopes of fostering conversations around them. You can access these by clicking on "Conversations" at the top of the site's homepage, or simply go here: projectsammaan.com/conversations/active-conversation/

The current conversation revolves around menstrual hygiene practices. I encourage all of you to participate!


Cheers and thanks,

Kevin