Detect Quickly, Report Quickly, and Get Fixed Quickly: NRW management in Thailand's EEC with Bordin Udol, CEO of East Water

[00:00:00] Piers Clark: Welcome to the Exec Exchange 15 minute podcast, in which a leader from the water sector shares a story to inspire, educate, and inform other water sector leaders from around the globe.
My name is Piers Clark and my guest today is Bordin Udol, the Chief Executive of East Water in Bangkok, Thailand.
[00:00:18] Piers Clark: And what we're gonna be talking about today is the EEC, not the European community as some of you might be thinking, but instead, it is the Eastern Economic Corridor and some of the challenges that East Water is dealing with in Thailand.
[00:00:32] Piers Clark: Bordin, it is wonderful to be connected with you. Thank you for taking the time.
[00:00:36] Bordin Udol: Thank you so much, Piers.
[00:00:38] Piers Clark: We always start by wanting to know a little bit about our podcaster. Now, we met about eight months ago and you were very new in the role. So you've now been in post for almost a year and you know, that means that you are out of the honeymoon period. So, whatever goes wrong, it's your fault.
[00:00:55] Bordin Udol: Yes it is. Yes it is.
[00:00:57] Piers Clark: Alright, can you talk me through, what were you doing before you joined East Water?
[00:01:02] Bordin Udol: I began my career as an environmental engineer working for design project of wastewater treatment facilities about 30 years ago, and that facility is for about 10% of Bangkok province area.
[00:01:16] Bordin Udol: I was working with a consultant in Thailand and, you know, help the government to design the wastewater collecting and treatment system for a part of Bangkok.
[00:01:26] Bordin Udol: And down the road, when I start growing up in my career, I propose to set up a company that provide a wastewater solution for the mother company. And I was appointed as the managing director when I was 32 years old and I had been in charge for that job for 15 years.
[00:01:45] Bordin Udol: And three, four years down the road, I joined East Water as the Chief Operating Officer and that's about 10 years ago.
[00:01:54] Piers Clark: And that was the step up to then to become Chief Executive 10 months ago?
[00:01:58] Bordin Udol: Yeah, since last year. So, more than 30 years of experience, one key lesson has become very clear to me that sustainability is no longer a choice, it is a business imperative.
And water security is not just an environmental issue, but nowadays it's a fundamental pillar of economic stability.
[00:02:16] Piers Clark: Absolutely. You can't have populations of humans living where there isn't water and there isn't sanitation. Society will collapse.
Alright. Let's talk about East Water. How many people do you serve? Which part of Thailand do you cover? What sort of activities do you do?
[00:02:31] Bordin Udol: Many people know East Water as Thailand's largest raw water supplier. But in reality, we see ourselves as a total water solution provider focused on long-term water security.
We manage the entire water lifecycle from upstream water resources to our large scale transmission pipeline or what we call water grid. This water grid cover three provinces of Thailand covering about 13,000 square kilometers. And these provinces is top five in GDP where we rank all 70 plus provinces in Thailand.
[00:03:08] Bordin Udol: So basically, these three area are very much one of the economic heart of the country.
[00:03:14] Piers Clark: This is the zone that's called the EEC, the Eastern Economic Corridor?
[00:03:19] Bordin Udol: Exactly. These three provinces are defined as the new economic growth for the country. So, we manage from upstream water resources, to our large scale transmission, all the way to downstream service. For example, tap water, industrial water treatment and waste water management.
[00:03:38] Piers Clark: It's both drinking water and sanitation.
[00:03:41] Bordin Udol: Exactly. Yes. And all those are delivered through our subsidiary company, Universal Utilities. So, in short our mission is simple but critical. We ensure water security that supports sustainable growth for both industry and communities.
[00:03:55] Piers Clark: So you are running the water utility, both drinking water and sanitation for the Eastern Economic Corridor in Thailand. One of the most strategic parts of Thailand because it underpins the whole economy.
[00:04:08] Piers Clark: Now, talk me through some of the challenges that you've got that you are facing in running a utility that covers such an important strategic zone.
[00:04:17] Bordin Udol: First of all, Piers, Thailand, as a Southeast Asia country, close to equator, our weather is very much tropical weather. When it rains, it rains so hard. When it drought, it's gone. So basically, water resource management is a very big challenge for the country. You may see, lately news that part of Thailand has flood problems. And maybe 10 years down the road, you may see that in some area, there is drought problem.
[00:04:44] Bordin Udol: And this is very challenge for Eastern Economic Corridor. As I said earlier, it is the new economic heart of the country. It continue to expand particularly because of the country policy. Now, today it has over 6,000 to 7,000 acres of industrial estate, which has more than 10,000 factories.
[00:05:06] Bordin Udol: The growth is not slowing down. The growth is climbing up. So, in order to support this challenge, East Water has developed 553 kilometers of water grid, which connect to 17 national and private reservoir, and another three or four major rivers and canals.
[00:05:26] Piers Clark: Well, talk me through some of the challenges that you are facing in particular around that network. What are the things that keep you awake at night?
[00:05:35] Bordin Udol: Our biggest challenge today is climate volatility which I refer to prolonged dry period of weather from El Niño, followed by unusual heavy rain during La Niña. And in many area that we are facing is the seasonal salt water intrusion upstream in major rivers. So basically the quality of water, in this three provinces are not stable.
[00:06:01] Piers Clark: And one of the jobs you've gotta do is balance the water quality, make sure the right water quality gets to the right people.
Brilliant. So, one of the challenges a modern water utility obviously has is managing non-revenue water and leaky pipes and theft from their pipes. Is that an issue that you have in East Water?
[00:06:18] Bordin Udol: Yes, definitely. During the last 30 years, we have internally improved our expertise in managing this loss. We feel every drop of water represents sustainability costs. And
[00:06:29] Bordin Udol: who knows that at some point in time that drop, maybe so valuable during the drought time.
[00:06:36] Piers Clark: Every drop of water that gets into your network, every drop of water that's been treated is incredibly precious, isn't it?
[00:06:42] Bordin Udol: Yeah exactly. We believe in integrated technology. So, we combine advanced system with deep operation expertise of our people.
[00:06:52] Bordin Udol: We have also strong operational culture that we call: detect fast, detect quickly, report quickly, and get fixed quickly. With this simple logic, we cut it from before more than 3% in our transmission system down to about 1.3- 1.4% a year ago.
[00:07:10] Piers Clark: And that point about responding quickly is important, not just because that means that the leaks are reduced because they're not running for long periods of time , it also means that the small leaks don't grow into big leaks.
[00:07:21] Piers Clark: But most importantly, it means the disruption to customers is minimized. It's not just detect repair, reinstall it's, detect quickly, repair quickly, install quickly, you know, get the whole thing solved. It's a brilliant mindset.
Yeah exactly. For our operation system, we learn to adapt them. We know that we cannot stop the water flowing in our water grid, even though we see the leak, sometime we approach fast, turn down the pressure such that we can online fixing the leak without stopping the water off the pipeline.
We very much employ the hydraulic simulation models to simulate different operating scenarios to optimize water level throughout the day in any circumstances. As I said, we knock it down to about 1.33% about two years ago.
[00:08:09] Piers Clark: The audience listening to this, you'd have caught their attention when you were talking about 1.3%, non-revenue water, and they've all gone: "Oh my God, how do I get there?"
[00:08:17] Piers Clark: They will have then realized you were talking about the trunk mains, the transmissions, that that's okay, that's big. Everyone's now waiting to hear what's the figure that you've got in your distribution system ' cause that, of course, is a much more complicated many more joints, many more connections, many more opportunities for there to be leaks. Do you know what your non-revenue water is in the distribution system?
[00:08:37] Bordin Udol: 16% but the point is we start our concession with 30% plus about 17 years ago when we received the asset from the government.
[00:08:47] Piers Clark: So when the company was formed, you inherited the assets that were in public ownership. And of course, as is always the way they've been under invested and you've had to do a lot of work to upgrade them.
[00:08:59] Bordin Udol: Exactly. And we believe in our operational excellence that our people provide, keep plucking in with technology that available this day.
For example, here we apply the active leakage control, combined with the AI big data analytics to identify what we call invisible leaks. We just start employing this approach about a year ago and we start seeing so much benefit.
[00:09:23] Bordin Udol: It is basically an add on to what we have achieved so far that, oh, okay, it used to take us time to find where the leak is, but this AI technology help us to identify it quicker. So we believe that we are on the right track, that we employ both technology and execution and commitment to sustainability.
[00:09:45] Piers Clark: It is a terrific journey you've gone on the non-revenue water. My takeaway from this conversation is here you are the leader of a water utility that's serving a very important strategic zone in Thailand. Inherited the assets from the government 17 years ago and you've been on a long journey of improvement and have achieved some staggering things, reducing non-revenue water in the distribution network from 30% to 16% and in the transmission from 3% to 1.3%.
[00:10:14] Piers Clark: I'm intrigued to hear whether you think you can get even lower. Do you think you can get lower than 16%?
[00:10:19] Piers Clark: Where do your heart, tell you what you'll settle at?
[00:10:22] Bordin Udol: Well, best practice is about 9 to 10% right in some area. If my peer can do it, then we find a way to achieve it as well. Before we seem to think that would it be economical to achieve lower than 16% because cutting down from 30 to 20 is one thing, 20 to 15 is one thing, right? The 15 down to 10 is another thing.
[00:10:43] Bordin Udol: But with the technology this day, we start seeing the pathway that we can achieve the world best practice level.
Brilliant. Bordin, it is wonderful to chat with you.
[00:10:55] Piers Clark: I'd like to finish with a question asking you to go back 30 years, before you were even doing design consultancy. What advice would you give a young Bordin Udol?
[00:11:07] Bordin Udol: I always want to be a successful business person, following my dad's footstep. I put myself into the environmental arena of business. So if I were to talk to my old self again, I would say that be open for challenge, be resilient.
[00:11:25] Bordin Udol: And when the time come, just tackle the challenge as your gut feeling, tell you so and you will be what you dream for.
[00:11:32] Piers Clark: You have been listening to the Exec Exchange with me, Piers Clark, and my guest today has been Bordin Udol, the Chief Executive of East Water in Bangkok, Thailand.
[00:11:43] Piers Clark: Thank you to our sponsors and until next time, keep asking questions, keep sharing, and keep safe.