The value of applying urban planning principals to running a water utility, with Ruben Fernandes, Executive Director, Águas do Porto, Portugal

[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 Ruben Fernandes, the executive director at Águas do Porto in Portugal.
[00:00:17] Piers Clark: And I'm sure I've butchered that, but I'm sure he'll be kind with me. Ruben, wonderful to have you with us.
[00:00:23] Ruben Fernandes: Thank you for inviting me to be here with you today, Piers.
[00:00:27] Piers Clark: Wonderful. Now we are going to start by learning a bit about your background. We're also then going to delve into the role you play because obviously Águas do Porto is slightly different to other water utilities. But before we get to that, how did you get into the role that you are in today?
[00:00:42] Ruben Fernandes: I'm a civil engineer and in my last year of my bachelor degree, I decided to specialize on urban planning and design. Then I decided to have my master's on economics and later my PhD again on the topic of urban planning and design. My first year of my professional background were associated with research and development and also teaching at the university.
[00:01:07] Ruben Fernandes: I was not feeling fulfilled with that, so I decided to venture on the private sector. Fortunately, I found someone who told me, well, I'm going to give you this opportunity
[00:01:18] Ruben Fernandes: Then I saw that private sector alone was also not fulfilling me so I decided to go to the public sector and I worked as a public officer and then a coordinator in this regional government . It was there, that I worked with the president of this organization. He retired and one year later, he recommended my name and a non-specialist on water came to a water utility.
[00:01:45] Piers Clark: And now, you are executive director of one of the largest water utilities in Portugal serving the city of Porto. And actually the topic we're going to talk about today is how you've brought that urban planning thinking into the sector.
[00:01:58] Piers Clark: But before we get to that, let's just learn a bit more about Águas do Porto. How many people do you serve? Where are you based? What sort of activities do you do?
[00:02:08] Ruben Fernandes: We are based in the city of Porto, which is located in the north region of Portugal. We serve around 165,000 customers. Our activities are not only focused on providing drinking water to people, and also treating and transporting the wastewater. We also take care of the blue infrastructure of the city be it the streams and rivers of the city. We also provide environmental education activities. So, at the end of the day, we serve the entire community.
[00:02:40] Piers Clark: And I think it's worth talking specifically about your role. So, at Águas do Porto, you have three executive members. You have a sort of chair who gets involved in the voting. You have a CFO, and then you do the operational and forward planning leadership. Is that correct?
[00:02:56] Ruben Fernandes: Yes, that's exactly it.
[00:02:58] Piers Clark: Now, most of the time the people that run the water sector are either engineers or scientists or sometimes they're finance people. We rarely have someone with your background, deeply embedded in being an urban planner. You've been in the role for almost 4 years now,
[00:03:13] Piers Clark: And so you've had just enough time now, I think, to start being able to bring your particular flavor of management, your particular perspectives on how the utility should run. Now, just before we get to talking about the urban planning side, I do think it's worth us taking a minute to dwell upon one of the features that I think Águas do Porto is best known for. You don't just do innovation for innovation sake. You actually are really good at embedding your innovations. One of the facts I heard was that 90% of your energy generation, your wastewater treatment plants, they're self-generating. Is that right?
[00:03:45] Ruben Fernandes: Yes. Águas do Porto, first of all is very renowned for being very innovative. It's already part of the company's DNA before I arrived, so I just had the obligation to keep the energy flowing. . One of the things that I decided to do is to bring some planning to the innovation that we were doing here. And just to give you two examples, I saw a company that was very innovative but didn't have this department that would plan innovation in the company. So, I decided to create a Digital Transformation Department. In this unit, we create the digital transformation plan so we clearly know what the company wants to do in the future. What are the kind of innovation that we want to produce? On the disruptive side, for instance, we are using our wastewater treatment plants, even our campus where our partners are based as living labs to experiment with a number of technology, to see if that technology is potentially useful in the future to scale up.
[00:04:50] Piers Clark: So, you've got your headquarters that you are using as a living lab, a test bed for new technologies. What sort of things are you testing?
[00:04:58] Ruben Fernandes: In the campus, we are testing different nature-based solutions here to infiltrate the rainwater, also to treat rainwater. We are involved in a number of horizon projects, in which we are testing technologies to allow us to be more self-sufficient from an energy point of view. One of these technologies is about producing synthetic cars with a mobile unit that you can use in a bigger plant or in a smaller plant.
[00:05:25] Ruben Fernandes: One of the other things that I realized is that we are not taking advantage of this amount of data that we have. So I decided to bring to the company a different type of worker, of collaborator which are the data analysts. They are very expensive but the fact is the amount and the diversity of data and topics that they can tackle with our data is so huge. For instance, trying to make the video inspections try to predict what will happen in other parts of our networks, which AI with machine learning tools.
[00:06:03] Ruben Fernandes: These are the kind of stuff that we are experimenting with their knowledge. And they are really bringing a lot of value. Reducing the opex, but making sure that we are not compromising our activity. At the end of the day, the money that we spent in their salaries is more than overcompensated by the money that we can reduce in our overhaul asset management strategy.
[00:06:26] Piers Clark: Excellent. It is interesting because it is a very different mindset that as an urban planner you are bringing to bear. And let's talk a bit about how that comes into play when you are talking about some of the climate crisis activities and planning for floods or droughts, how does the urban planning mindset come into play then?
[00:06:45] Ruben Fernandes: At the end of 2022, I was still learning about the company, but suddenly, many things happened that I thought that they would never happen such as the cyber attack, more recently, this energy problem in the Iberian peninsula and also France, the floods that took place by the end of 2022, beginning of 2023. And it was such a huge problem in the city.
[00:07:11] Ruben Fernandes: We had our heritage site of the city completely flooded, partially destroyed. I think that was the moment that I thought, well, I should really put my urban planning skills in motion because despite the fact that we are a particular utility, which holistic view of water. We cannot solve the problem only by ourselves, even though at those times, this was what our many stakeholders, they were asking from us to solve the problem.
[00:07:45] Piers Clark: You had everyone expecting you to stay within the sort of traditional tram lines of what a water utility or wastewater utility should do and not stray out of them. And your argument, the only way we're gonna solve this problem is if we actually look at it on a much wider scale and we actually build in some of the wider urban planning
[00:08:04] Ruben Fernandes: Yes, that's exactly it. So when everyone was expecting us to solve the problem, well, the thing that I stated was this is, a basin problem on one hand. Many basins that we can find in Porto they do not start in Porto; they start upstream in other municipalities, in other territories.
[00:08:23] Ruben Fernandes: On one hand this is a spatial problem, so we need to find a way to talk with other stakeholders that are located upstream and to get them on board to try to solve the problems more upstream as possible so we that are located downstream don't suffer with this kind of phenomena.
[00:08:43] Piers Clark: So how successful have you been in getting that level of engagement that upstream engagement?
[00:08:49] Ruben Fernandes: We've been very successful because one of the first things that we have done was to create a governance structure to solve the problem. And in this governance structure, we included all the key stakeholders that could help us solve the problems. So other municipalities the Environmental Portuguese Agency that deals with streams and rivers that has the duty to manage the basins. Also the private stakeholders especially the big urban development promoters because they have like a huge impact in a city and if they t in an unsustainable way, the impact is even worse.
[00:09:31] Ruben Fernandes: Also the different departments of the municipality of Porto because sometimes different departments that are part of the same organization, they don't talk with each other so you really need to facilitate this kind of conversation. So one of the first thing was setting up the governance model and also having technical discussions that we have once per month.
[00:09:55] Piers Clark: So that's the first step. What comes next? What else can you build upon with your urban planning background?
[00:10:00] Ruben Fernandes: Next came the planning process so we decided to create a program that's called "Porto+Permeável" which means like a more permeable Porto which is comprised of a number of actions that are all related to sustainable urban drainage solutions.
[00:10:18] Piers Clark: This is like the sponge cities in China where when it rains, we're trying to get as much of the rainwater. Captured trickling down, not racing, racing into the streams, correct?
[00:10:27] Ruben Fernandes: Actually, yeah it is a Sponge City program in which we are looking in particular at two different things. The first thing was the intersection of blue and green infrastructure. Whenever this intersection happens, we modify the green infrastructure so it can accommodate and infiltrate as much water as it can possible. And a second part, which is based on micro urban drainage sustainable solutions in which basically, we are incentivizing the smaller promoters of urban development to implement within their plot sustainable solutions when it comes to infiltration and retention of water.
[00:11:07] Piers Clark: So how's that going? Because these SUD solutions, sustainable urban development solutions, some people love them, some people hate them. How's it going down in Porto?
[00:11:17] Ruben Fernandes: In our case, we are trying to really make people implement them. And in order to do so we have this partnership with the municipality of Portugal in which an environmental index was constructed and is already being implemented. It's an index that if you prove that you are implementing a number of sustainable solutions within your plot, you can have like a reduction in your tax property or, on the other hand you can have the possibility to increase the construction area of a new building. So these are the kind of things that we, in partnership with the municipality, we are offering.
[00:11:55] Piers Clark: Excellent. Money is a great incentive, isn't it? Whether you can get a rebate on your tax or indeed get more of your development property through it's always gonna focus people's minds.
[00:12:06] Piers Clark: Ruben that's very interesting. Tell me, where next? What happens now?
[00:12:10] Ruben Fernandes: Now it's a very crucial phase because the city master plan is going to be revised in the short term. And we really want to check this window as an opportunity to embed these principles, into the next generation of this master plan. And in particular, we want the master plan to look at the blue infrastructure and to take it as the primary infrastructure around which the city should be built.
[00:12:40] Piers Clark: Ruben, thank you for that. We are running out of time now, but let me finish by asking you, what is it that you owe your parents?
[00:12:48] Ruben Fernandes: Well, I think in my case I owe my parents to the fact that they have let me be who I wanted to be, always be it in my personal level, be it on the professional side.
[00:13:00] Ruben Fernandes: So I was never made to go one direction, you know? I was always free connecting my own thoughts. Even if that goes against what my parents believe so I am who I am. I disagree with them in many things, but at the end of the day, we respect each other.
[00:13:18] Piers Clark: I've got four children myself, I've always thought that when your children rebel a little bit, you've done good parenting. You want your children to think differently to you, to build upon whatever it is that you've built to take some of your experiences and find their own route. And it is great that you are able to acknowledge that with your own parents.
[00:13:34] Ruben Fernandes: Yeah, I think it's obvious, but when I look at other parents. I feel that they were not given the chance to think by themselves, They were made to be medical doctors or
[00:13:43] Piers Clark: are you telling me that your parents, when you were born, they didn't look at you and say, now baby Reuben, you are gonna grow up to become an urban planner? That wasn't what they said.
[00:13:52] Ruben Fernandes: No, not at all.
[00:13:54] Ruben Fernandes: Another thing is the sense of responsibility, Piers, because my parents, they were never closely monitoring what I was doing, like from a very early age, they made me feel responsible for my actions. I'd never had my parents nagging about my grades in school, you know. I remember these discussions when I was like, in third grade or fourth grade, they would tell me you are the only one who's responsible for that grade. So, you are the only one who's going to define your future. If you want to improve, that's also your option.
[00:14:26] Piers Clark: You have been listening to the Exec Exchange with me, Piers Clark, and my guest today has been Ruben Fernandes, the executive director at Águas do Porto in Portugal, and we've been talking about how some of the urban planning skills that Ruben has got have been being applied into the leadership of that utility.
[00:14:47] Piers Clark: I hope you can join us next time. Thank you very much.