Innovative Water Solutions for Slum Communities with Philippe De Roux

Piers Clark: Welcome to the Executive Exchange, a 15 minute podcast in which a leader from the water sector shares a story to inspire, educate, and inform other water sector leaders across the globe. My name is Piers Clark and today my guest is Philippe De Roux, Chief Executive of Better With Water, and we're talking about how to supply water to some of the poorest communities in the world, those people living in slums.

Philippe, thank you for joining me today.

Philippe de Roux: Thank you, Piers. Good morning.

So let's start with a little bit about your background. Can you tell me how long you've been with Better With Water and what you did before you started?

Um, I started Better With Water, I'm the co founder, 15 years ago now. And my background is business management, a bit of philosophy.

I work, uh, as a social worker, first in slums, uh, in the Philippines for one year. Um, and, uh, I was, um, a collector, uh, for, uh, a microcredit, uh, NGO. Then I work in the microcredit sector in slums in Manila for several years. Then came back to France, worked for a big American company, uh, managing gasoline stations to three.

Different. But then after I wanted to go back to social business and I put up my own plumbing business in France. We call it integration company, meaning to say that we welcome people with a difficult backgrounds to make them plumbers. And then merging my experiences of plumbing in France and microcredit in slums in the Philippines.

I got this idea of putting water at home in slums in the Philippines.

Piers Clark: Excellent. I love that. That little hiatus of going into managing petrol stations, um, between the microcredit and the plumbing. Right, now let's talk about what is Better With Water and what I'd like you to tell me is, who do you serve?

How many people do you serve? And give me a little bit of a flavor of the size of the organization. How many people do you employ?

Philippe de Roux: So Better With Water is a utility which is dedicated to serving water in slums, in big megacities of developing countries. We work currently in two countries, the Philippines, in three cities.

We work in Bangladesh, two cities. We are serving every day 55, 000 people. Uh, and we have a team of 160, uh, staffs, uh, uh, in France with 10 people, and then, uh, all the, the team is, uh, in, uh, are in the countries of intervention, uh, 40 percent of them come directly from the slum where we work, uh, so collectors, plumbers, uh, community facilitator, like that.

Piers Clark: Excellent right now, um. Obviously, you're not generating you're not running water treatment work. So let's start by talking about the interface you have with the local water utility. My impression is that you're dealing that they provide a bulk water meter to the edge of the slum, and then you're, you're managing everything from the bulk meter forward.

Is that right?

Philippe de Roux: Totally right. We have we sign a MOA with, with the water operator with

Piers Clark: What's a MOA?

Philippe de Roux: Memorandum of agreement, a contract, uh, to to get a bulk connection. We also work with the municipality because of course, uh, if you want to provide water in slums, you know, slum are tricky places where, uh, you know, the land issues is not always solved.

You have a. Many mafias, many troubles, many problems, sometime also slums are not the priority in the municipalities because you know, they, they are already running out of water. It's a, it's a big issue in cities, which are growing so fast. So it's a long negotiation, usually one to two years to get to build connection to manage to, uh, uh, work, um, with the utility.

And then of course, we are the very last mile where. They are not able to work with their own standards. Uh, we have a totally different approach. Complimentary. We are a mini utility for slums and, uh, we, the, our proximity is our really secret secret, huh? This is a secret to be close with the community and to be able to mobilize them at the same time, provide, provide them a quality service.

So we get to build connection. We pay for the water. We sell it. We get the margin. Of course, the service is a bit different. We put we are the one to build our own water network inside the slum till until the top at home, which is very important. Usually people stop at the meter for us. We go until the top in every home.

Uh, and then afterward we, we, uh, manage our non revenue water. We manage our collection of payment and everything. Sometime if the quality of water is okay up front, uh, we don't need to treat it. Uh, sometime we need to store and we need to chlorinate a bit if needed also.

Piers Clark: Okay. Now we're going to come back to the non revenue water because there's some really interesting statistics there, but I'd like to just dwell a bit on one of the reasons why the utility.

That provides the water to you doesn't do this last mile connections is because of the, the volatility of payments, how to collect those, how to collect the money and how to manage that, um, this very volatile, um, um, environment, very volatile population. So how do you do it?

Philippe de Roux: First, before the payment, the problem, first problem and how to, to you, you can, I mean, send your own team inside this area, because sometimes you have mafias, you have complex social situation and you can not enter.

So that's the first reason why they don't want to go there. And sometime, you know, you have people that tapping illegally, the water at night, opening the roads, you know, putting their own pipes inside the main pipe and then stealing the water. That's the situation. So, of course, they are not so welcome, usually.

So that's why, uh, they are, they like us to be the, the intermediary.

Piers Clark: I don't see why you would be any different. They'd still see you as the, as the Because,

Philippe de Roux: yeah, we have first a big smile, and second, uh, this is our job, this is our knowledge, it's social mobilization, it's key. When you enter an area, before we have our plumbers, before we have all the team members, technical teams, we have social workers.

And that's completely different. Uh, so in after, uh, the second thing is like those, these people, you know, they, they are revenue streamer. They have informal work. That's what I learned when I was in microcredit. They have revenues every day and they don't have the ability to save. Um, so if you don't, if you, if you don't collect every day, if you're not at a door to door with the proximity with, uh, they know you, they trust you, then you cannot manage to collect.

So, uh, a utility, um, you know, classical utility, um, uh, water operator cannot do that. They cannot collect every day and they cannot mobilize socially an area. It's really a different job and we don't blame. Of course, it's just different.

Piers Clark: And just to be clear, when you say every day, you literally mean someone is knocking on the door saying today's charges these few cents and it's done on a fixed fee or because there aren't meters in

Philippe de Roux: there are meters and it's we have we have meter readings every day or every week.

It's step by step according also to the to the need and then to the. The ability of each family. So it's, it's also tailor made. Huh? And so we, we, yes, definitely. There's the same way I did it for micro credit. We, we actually, we do the same for water meter reading every day, every week, according to the, yeah, to the, to the family.

And then, uh, uh, a collection of payment every day or every week door to door with a collector from the area going there.

Piers Clark: And just to be clear, so there's a meter on each of the properties within the slum.

Philippe de Roux: We have a cluster meter, uh, because we also design, uh, uh, something where, uh, which is also very, um, uh, I think adapted to, uh, the life of slums, uh, to avoid illegal tapping.

So under cages, uh, we were the first one to do that for water meters. We, uh, group them and then after you have all the pipes going to the houses, so the meter reading is done on the cluster cage.

Piers Clark: All right, I think this is now going to help with my next question. Oh, actually, you know, before I get to talk about non revenue water, what happens if someone says, I'm not paying, what do you do?

Philippe de Roux: The first thing is, um, since, uh, there, there is a good relationship with the, with the collector, usually most of the time, and it's, you know, there is this proximity, uh, they don't pay one day, they pay the day after something like that. We know them very well. So it's okay. If not, uh, they get very fast. The secret is really to be fast.

They get there so that you don't, they don't increase their, uh, uh, their, their, their unpaid bill. So we, they get to disconnection notice. Okay. After a few days, like three, four days. And then if they don't pay the day after we. Uh, cut and turn off the com, the, the, the meter. Okay. And they cannot, uh, access it because it's under a cage.

And then when they, uh, we get the payment, usually one or two days after we open. Also very fast. This is the secret because most of the time for big operators, you know, they, they will, uh, close the meter after 1, 2, 3, 4 months. So the, the, the unpaid bill, they cannot recover anymore. And then, um. They, they will open again after one month, something like that.

So they will tap it illegally again. So the secret is to be fast.

Piers Clark: Okay. Uh, there's a lot of learning there that could be taken, isn't it? Um, now let's talk about non revenue water because typically in, uh, slum communities, non revenue water is very high, not because of leakage. It's usually because of illegal connections and theft.

You've got some impressive statistics on, uh, on the systems you're running. Can you just share those statistics and talk me through how you achieved it?

Philippe de Roux: So, yes, it's true. The previous situation is that we have high non revenue water because of illegal tapping of water, but also because of leaks. It's leaking a lot.

Most of the time in the drain, by the way, which is very dangerous. Um, and also the, the, the, the design is not properly made. So, um, it's leaking, uh, there is illegal, what, uh, you know, tapping that, that's mainly the cause of a number of, which is sometime 80%. I'm thinking about 8080. So this is huge, of course.

So the first when the water operator will make a contract with us and they have one client paying on time and no more non revenue water and increasing sales. So it's really a win win contract. Definitely. Um, so, um, what we do, we, we've designed a network where Uh, we have, uh, submitters. We have cluster cages.

Uh, we, we are there every day. Uh, that's also, uh, the key, uh, the plumbers are plumbers. We have a team of plumbers usually, but by the way, they, they, they come from the area and they are trained, but they come from the area of intervention. So they can intervene very fast. We also have a very, very efficient software.

Uh, which allowed us to see, uh, also very fast since we have also often some, uh, meter readings and, uh, we of course, uh, uh, are checking our non revenue water, uh, almost every week. So it allowed us to see where are the potential leaks. So it's also the same way for payment. We need to be fast also to react fast when there is a leak.

Which is most of the time, uh, uh, a little leak, something like that. Uh, but also I, since I did 10 years, I was, uh, you know, I had a plumbing company for 10 years. I cannot go into all details, but, uh, I was very strict to the way we put our connectors, the way we, uh, we, we designed to avoid a potential leak, you know, or else we, if we have a connector.

Yes.

Piers Clark: Rather than, uh, revisiting. Yeah,

Philippe de Roux: exactly. So, uh, uh, for each connector underground, we have a GPS point, you know, like that. So, so we know, uh, also where are the potential, uh, uh, you know, leaks. Uh, and then of course if we see that, uh, sometime people are, uh, illegally tapping, uh, we, uh, of course talk to them and, and we move that very fast.

Piers Clark: Okay. All right. So what I'm getting the impression of, there's quite a few very unique problems around the volatility of payments, but there's also some, uh, unique problems to slum communities. And there's also some, you're managing some of the issues that, uh, larger, um, developed country type utilities would be common with like non revenue water.

Are there any other aspects that you think, bearing in mind we're coming to the end of this, uh, this podcast, any other aspects you think you, it would be good to share here?

Philippe de Roux: I think one of the key aspects is that our structure is hybrid, meaning to say we are working hand in hand with, uh, you know, an NGO working together with a company.

Okay. And that's two cultures, two, uh, uh, different, uh, uh, you know, spirit like that, but working hand in hand, uh, along the way. And usually a contract with a water operator is 15 years. Uh, so, uh, and it's very key to have this both sides to be able to enter, uh, this kind of area. Excellent.

Piers Clark: Fully. Um, we like to finish with, uh, uh, a bit of a personal question.

And my personal question to you is going to be what advice Uh, have you been given by your parents or by, um, someone that's, that's stayed with you, that's been, that's helped you be the man that you are today? What advice would you like to share?

Philippe de Roux: Um, I think my mother would tell me a lot that, um, we need to have a, an independent spirit, I mean, to be able to, uh, yeah, to, to, not to be in too much influence, to believe in what we want to do.

And I think, uh, it helped me a lot to, to achieve what, uh, what I did, which is also a team, uh, work, uh, I have to confess and also trust people. I like to delegate. I like to trust. And, uh, it's true that I can see in my, uh, uh, in the better with water, there is a lot of trust. And so a lot of, uh, innovation, uh, we move forward fast and we can be proud of that.

Piers Clark: Brilliant. very much for your time. You have been listening to the executive exchange with peers, Clark talking to Philippe De Roux, chief executive of Better With Water please join us next time. Goodbye.