Dear all,

Today I would like to introduce a project that you that I lead here at TÜV SÜD Asia Pacific Pte Ltd in Singapore. It is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and I had previously talked about it here in this thread: forum.susana.org/iso-standards-internati...on-treatment-systems.
By the way, TÜV SÜD is also in the process of becoming a SuSanA partner organization.

Title: Omni Processor - Landscaping and Standards Development
Duration: 2015 - 2019

Purpose
To develop a private technical standard that will lead to an International Workshop Agreement for safe and sustainable off-grid community scale sanitation technologies to ensure safe and sustainable solutions for the poor in developing countries

Activities
The Omni-Processor program aims to develop low-cost approaches for processing fecal sludge and the combined processing of fecal sludge and solid waste. The goal is to develop processors that are smaller than traditional treatment plants, with each processor supporting some 1,000 to 100,000 residents. Ideally, processed waste will be converted into products, forms of energy, or fertilizers and other soil amendments, which can generate revenue and thereby offset waste collection costs and increase people’s standard of living. Currently, there is no single international accepted and applicable standard available for Omni Processor type technologies – community scale, non-centralized, sustainable, sewage & solid-waste treatment systems – targeted at developing countries. These low-cost approaches should result in systems which are smaller than traditional waste treatment plants should help in addressing fecal sludge management where the failure of the traditional centralized/sewered and existing decentralized sanitation ecosystem results in risks to human and environmental health and safety. The lack of a standard results in scattered technology development, failure of installed systems, the pursuit of non-suitable technologies and the lack of innovative solutions or ability to compare the promise of possible solutions.

Goals:
The development of a private technical standard that will lead to an International Workshop Agreement for safe and sustainable off-grid community scale sanitation technologies and will help ensure that only safe and sustainable solutions are being procured, installed and used for the benefit of the poor in developing countries.

Objectives:
The technical standard will ensure that a certified system will meet a clear set of health and environmental safety and regulatory parameters and support the comparison of performance enabling informed decisions. The standard will also provide a common, transparent basis that promotes both technology development and commercial adoption.

Research or implementation partners:
TÜV SÜD initially developed a private technical standard with a selected group of experts, which was taken as the basis for an ISO International Workshop Agreement (IWA 28:2018, published in April 2018) document. Supported by American National Standards Institute (ANSI), Association Sénégalaise de Normalisation (ASN) and the foundation as the Chairman for Project Committee (PC) 318, IWA 28 is currently under development into a full ISO standard.


ISO PC 318 is lead by Raymond Lee, TÜV SÜD as Project Leader, Mr Sun Kim, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as Chairman, Sally Seitz, ANSI and Mr. El Hadji Abdourahmane Ndione, ASN as Secretary.

Biggest successes so far:
The formation of PC 318 follows the successful publication of International Workshop Agreement (IWA) 28, Faecal sludge treatment units – Energy independent, prefabricated, community-scale resource-recovery units – Safety and performance, in April 2018. Supported through a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, TÜV SÜD led the development of the private standard that served as the basis for the IWA. TÜV SÜD will now serve as the Secretariat of the Singapore National Mirror Committee, which will represent Singapore in providing input on the developing standard.


Singapore delegation represented by TÜV SUD colleagues

Main challenges / frustration:
Getting the right technical experts on board, getting consensus amongst the diverse stakeholders, working on an aggressive timeline

The first ISO PC-318 meeting was held in Dakar 16 - 19th July 2018, attended by over 25 countries to review and draft on the published IWA 28 document "Faecal sludge treatment units – Energy independent, prefabricated, community-scale resource-recovery units – Safety and performance

Grant size: USD $2,011,387

If you want to access some additional links for this project, please see here in the SuSanA project database: www.susana.org/en/knowledge-hub/projects/database/details/293
(scroll down to the end of the project description)

I'd also be happy to answer your questions or field your comments in this thread.

I am going to introduce two more of our projects in the next few days.

Kind regards,

Mei Yee Chan