 Hello, and good afternoon, good evening, or good morning, depending on where you're joining us from. Welcome to Engineering for Change, or E4C for short. Today we're pleased to bring you the latest in E4C's 2017 webinar series, Professional Water Well Drilling in Africa, Incentives and Support. My name is Rob Gurdier, and I'm the managing news editor at E4C. I'll be the moderator for today's webinar. If you are following us on Twitter today, I'd also like to invite you to join the conversation with our hashtag, hashtag E4C webinars. I'd like to take a moment now to tell you a bit more about today's webinar. Drilled water wells are vital for Africa to achieve universal access to clean drinking water. The water must be safe, affordable and available through services that last. To get there, these wells or boreholes need to be built in a professional manner. Design, siding, procurement, construction, project management and supervision are key elements within the professional sector. This webinar will present a guidance note that has been developed by SCAP Foundation and UNICEF to raise professionalism through six proposed areas of work. Those include the institutional framework, groundwater data, capacity of personnel, project design, implementation and monitoring, raising awareness and adequate investment. To present this material today, we've invited two leading voices in water, sanitation and hygiene for global development. Dr. Kirsten Danner is a Rural Water Supply Specialist at SCAP Consulting, an independent Swiss organization in the fields of development, instrumentary and aid. Dr. Danner also leads the Secretariat of the Rural Water Supply Network. So SCAP has to use UNICEF water, sanitation and hygiene specialists based at the UN headquarters in New York. Welcome and thank you for joining us. Before we get rolling, I'd also like to thank the E4C webinar series team. If anybody out there has questions about the series or would like to make a recommendation for future topics and speakers, we invite you to contact the team by using the email address visible on the slide. Webinars at engineering4change.org. Today's webinar is part of E4C's professional development offerings. Information on upcoming installments in the series as well as archive videos of past presentations can be found on the E4C's Webinars page as well as our YouTube channel. Both of those URLs are listed on the slide. And before we move on to our presenters, I'd like to tell you a little bit about engineering for change. E4C is a knowledge organization and global community of over one million engineers, designers, development practitioners and social scientists leveraging technology to solve quality of life challenges faced by underserved communities, including access to clean water and sanitation, sustainable energy, improved agriculture and more. 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If you're already an E4C member, check your email for an invitation to the webinar directly. A few housekeeping items before we get started. Let's see first where everyone is from. In the chat window, which is located at the bottom right of your screen, please go ahead and type in your location. If the chat is not open on your screen, you can access it by clicking the chat icon in the top right corner of the screen. Any technical questions or administrative problems should go in the chat window. Feel free to send a private chat to Engineering for Change admin if you have any issues. You can also use the chat window to type in your remarks you might have. During the webinar, please use the Q&A window located below the chat to type in your questions for the presenter. And again, if you don't see this, you can access it by clicking the Q&A icon in the top right corner. If you're listening to the audio broadcast and you encounter any troubles, try hitting stop and then start. You may also want to try opening WebEx up in a different browser. Following the webinar requires a certificate of completion showing one professional development hour for this session. Please follow the instructions on the top of the E4C Professional Development page. Let's see if we can see where some people are joining us from today. New York City in Michigan, welcome. Looks like we have a lot of people on the call. Just haven't seen a lot of people entering in where you might be from. It's now my pleasure to introduce our presenters, Dr. Kristen Danert. Dr. Kristen Danert is a rural supply specialist, rural water supply specialist who has spent 16 years developing in-country capacity for operation and maintenance. Cost-effective borehole drilling, technology adoption, and sector performance monitoring. She has provided face-to-face advisory and capacity development services to national and local governments, NGOs, and the private sector in over 10 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as remote support for others. She lived and worked in Uganda for 10 years up to 2008 when she moved to Switzerland to join SCAP. Since 2009, she has led the Secretariat of the Rural Water Supply Network. And Jose Hesse Canuto is a UNICEF watch specialist based at headquarters in New York. Jose works on global water supply strategies and has developed commissions in different regions of the world, including Africa, Asia, and Latin America, providing technical guidance to governments and UNICEF country offices on innovative and cost-effective solutions to rural water supply and climate resilience. Prior to joining UNICEF, Jose held various positions as water and sanitation consultant and as a supervisor both in the public and private sector. And it's now my pleasure to introduce Jose Hesse, who will start the presentation. Thank you very much, Rob. Perhaps if you could just confirm that you are hearing me well. Everybody can hear me. Maybe if I am assuming that yes, we just double-check. I can hear you loud and clear. Okay, perfect. Okay, Jose, as I was saying, it's a pleasure for us to be with you today during this presentation. This is a very important topic for us. We are, you know, the boring, a lot of our time, you know, to be subject. It is a great opportunity, you know, that we are able to share with you. So I will just go ahead and I will just start, you know, with the presentation. So this first slide, give a little bit of context and background to this initiative or to this work. We just wanted to raise basically the three points. You may be aware that it is estimated that 45% of the global population depends on groundwater for domestic uses. In Africa, where I'm now on an assignment, groundwater dependence is even higher than that and it's estimated to be over 75%. Here in Africa, these first populations and communities within the continent are particularly relying on groundwater. They rely on hand-up wells, historically, playing a major role in both rural and urban areas. You can also see cities in the continent, you know, in the continent here in Africa, particularly in Nigeria, where there is also a high dependence on groundwater for urban water supplies. But groundwater use for irrigation is also forecasted to increase. The potential for further development of irrigated agriculture fed by groundwater is considered, is considered, is considerable. It's estimated to be between 20 and 49% of the cropland of the continent here and here in Africa. So with these phases, there is no doubt that groundwater supplies and boreholes in general are to play a tremendous role in achieving the sustainable development goals in the continent. In rural areas as countries gradually improve supply coverage, new sources are required in difficult to reach locations. And also in locations with very complicated geological conditions. And here the risk of really dry boreholes are, as we know, high. So managing this uncertainty is one of the challenges of meeting the sustainable development goal for the drinking water target. So we are discussing the importance of groundwater development and borehole construction to achieve universal access. But we can say that the dry bore numbers of users over the last 15 years has actually led to a fall in the quality of project implementation. And this is one of our concerns. So if the emphasis is on large number of boreholes and the capacity to properly manage implementation, and I'm saying implementation, not even post construction. If the capacity to manage implementation is neglected, then construction quality suffers. Actually different estimates give us an idea of how much sustainability of water points is a key concern. We have the studies from the Rural Water Supply Network back in 2009, indicating that between 10 and 65% of the hampams in 20 African countries were not functional at the time of an export check. Further now we have studies in 2013 and 2015 telling us about non-functionality rates between 14 and 26%. What we can see here in this figure is a comparison of the functionality of water points in four countries compared with the age of the boreholes. And the figure, as you can see, shows that functionality falls as the age rises, and this is no news to us. This is something that is expected. But while this is to be expected, pay attention to the drop in functionality down to 72, 85%, already in the first one to two years of construction. And this is the real case of concern for us because we see a huge drop in functionality and therefore in the sustainability of these water points very, very quickly. So we are assuming that something may be going wrong already with the infrastructure. In boreholes fitted with hampams function poorly and we know that ultimately they fail. The physical problems are typically around three areas, right? One is the loge, for example, inadequate quantity of water or seasonal unreliability. The second one can be poor quality water, for example, high probability for logical or chemical quality, and then we have another area which is mechanical failure of the pump. So on the whole, these physical problems are caused by one or more secondary reasons, as we can see in the figure. And then these secondary reasons are a consequence of other deeper underlying causes. So it takes a little bit of an investigating role, just understanding what is going wrong. It takes a little bit of an effective role to try to begin into the real issues and the root of the problems. Just perhaps a comment here when we are thinking about rehabilitating water points, our advice always is to rather than just go and rehabilitate things without having a full understanding of what might have been drawn to have some thorough assessment of the root causes of the problem. Christine. Thank you very much. Okay, and if you can spot the deliberate mistake on this slide, you'll get extra points. So technical problems, this is just a slide to show you some of the kind of technical problems that we see, the physical problems. So the top three slides here, you have, apparently nobody can hear me, is that right? Can you hear me? Erica has a problem hearing. I can hear you. Great. Okay, thanks a lot. So just looking at the top three photographs on the left here, here we see basically rust corrosion. This is the pump rod and the rising main connector. So these have all been installed just for one year. So technical problem. On the right, the slide there, this is again a one year old pump apron and you see already you have a cracked apron. So there are issues there about quality of cement, quantity of cement, curing. This is not what a facility should look like within one year. Moving down to the middle left, a facility that's been constructed but no wall has been put around. In this particular country, they construct walls around hand pumps to prevent animals from coming to the borehole. So the well's been done, it's been installed, it's been paved, but the work hasn't been done according to the specifications. The next slide, the next picture in the middle, you just see the quality and this is not an apron that's been around for a long time. This is relatively new, a year, a year and a half old. You've got rust issues, you've got wearing away already of the superstructure. And likewise, on the left you have a problem there, you have the pipe basically at an angle. So you probably don't have a straight hole all the way down. The big photographs on the bottom right, you see two of the rising mains with massive corrosion. So these are some of the problems that can happen if the engineering isn't done well. And if you go to the next slide for me, Jose, underlying the problem of corrosion, you have a number of issues. So corrosion is one of the big water quality issues, particularly in Africa. And it's a problem that's been around for 30 years and still hasn't been solved. Essentially, when you have water with a pH of less than 6.5 or quite acidic, when you install galvanized materials, it will corrode. And what you see here, the picture on the top right is water that's being pumped early in the morning. Horrendous brown muggy water coming out. And there isn't a problem in terms of health, but there is a problem that people reject the water because of the taste and the colour and the aesthetic. So they don't want to wash the clothes, they can't cook the rice and it tastes badly. What's interesting, and if you look at the bottles on the left, is these are samples that were taken over time. And the bottle on the left was taken first thing in the morning. The bottle on the right has been, as the well has been pumped over several minutes, up to an hour. And the water is clearing. And this is a clear example of corrosive materials in the ground. So the hand pump is corroding, it sits overnight. The iron builds up in the water. And then when you first pump in the morning, you get filthy water coming out and eventually it clears. And this is not good enough. And certainly, as Jose mentioned, if we're going to meet these sustainable development goals and get safe, clean drinking water to everyone, the world has to stop installing hand pumps that corrode. There has to be a huge change. And I can come back later to some of the reasons that these are still being installed. And I'm talking to you as engineers. And this is a bit of a cryptic diagram that it's a very interesting research study that's been done in Uganda trying to understand the root causes for breakdown of pumps, breakdown of boreholes. These are pumps that have completely failed, sources that have completely failed. And what the designers looked at is trying to get to these underlying causes. And they looked at both the pre-construction phase, what happens before the well goes in, the construction phase, and the post-construction, the management, the support afterwards. And I think what's very interesting for myself and for you as engineers is to see how many problems we have in the construction. So it's a traffic light system. So green is good, orange is medium, and red is very problematic. And you see with these sources that have failed, there is something that's gone wrong with the construction in practically all of the cases. So we have engineering problems. We really need to get the quality of the engineering right. And I think that's why it's so exciting to be talking to you today. So let me hand back to Jose. See if you can hear me again. Yeah, I can hear you. You can. Good. So with this, we move a little bit into what is our presentation. And then actually from now on, we have now raised the issue about why it's what we are doing or what is what we can do to raise professionalization, the professionalization of the sector. But let's just start then by quickly looking and reading here on the slide, what do we mean or what is the definition of professionalism? So professionalism, we are going to have a working kind of a definition of being the skill, good judgment and behavior aspect from a person or an organization who can undertake a job well. So obviously what we didn't like to see and unfortunately we often see is many shortcuts, you know, we see thrillers that are not certified for work, that they don't have the capacity. We often see relations that are non-existent or they are not up here too. And many other issues that we will see now during the presentation on that we propose to have a focus. So improving drilling professionalism, we have to of course admit that it's not a one off activity. It's just much more a process. Based on our day-to-day work what we see is that it can take several years actually to raise standards and it really requires continued vigilance and to pay attention to this issue. But the rewards of a professional sector are enormous for the economy of the countries that we are working with, long-term prosperity and employment and indeed what we are really after here, which is to meet the universal access to drinking water and to meet the sustainable development goal. So what we've done is over the last years the partners supporting the sustainable groundwater development chain within the rural water supply network, we have focused on advance the thinking and we have developed as you can see on the screen different manuals on borehole drilling. What you see is kind of the core document which is the code of practice for cost-effective boreholes that is assigning 90 principles around cost-effective boreholes. And then to support this, the code of practice, we have gone into more detail and we have developed this other set of technical guidance around sustainable groundwater development, costing and pricing, procurement and contract management, citing of drill water wells and also very important supervising of water well drilling. But let's say that broadly speaking these documents focus on what to do, right? This is more about what needs to happen. Now, recently we are trying to even much more attention and we are really willing to discuss how to raise professionalism of groundwater development. So as a result of a very thorough consultative process and, you know, discussing with many of our units of country offices but also with many of the partners of our partners and with sector specialists and gurus, let's say, even more obviously Kerstin is one of the most important ones. But, you know, it's been a very detailed work gathering a lot of insights and putting a lot of thought into coming up with this guidance now that we are presenting today. The result of all this thinking is simplified as you can see on the slide and it was already introduced by both at the beginning in the six proposed areas of engagement that you can see. This is about institutional frameworks, groundwater information, project design, implementation and monitoring, capacity, investment and dialogue and awareness. As you may also identify these covers, if you have the chance to take a look in the slide before, these cover most of the underlying reasons for failure that we've seen in the slide before. But let's unpack a little bit more each of these hexagons that we like to refer to, you know, these six areas of engagement that we refer to as the hexagons now. It's a little bit more in detail. So the first one is, as we've seen, institutional frameworks. So what is the problem here? So what we see is that in many countries the laws, regulations, procedures, as well as the responsibilities for groundwater development and management of the resource are in many cases they are not clear or even worse they are contradictory. So responsibilities may fall between or be divided among different ministries, different national and provincial or even at district level administrations. We see also that countries lack technical guidance for borehole construction and rehabilitation in many cases. And as you can imagine the combination of all these weaknesses is what results is in overlapping mandates and overall confusion. And this is clearly undermining the professionalization and the professionalism of groundwater development. So what we are proposing here is to promote and undertake these things that help to improve the laws, the regulations and procedures of borehole drilling and their experience. You know, we are suggesting that, you know, to determine whether high quality boreholes are being consistently constructed in countries. We are suggesting to map out different drilling projects and programs to review existing national laws from regulations and procedures. And then just to assess, you know, whether these laws, regulations and procedures are known, you know, and they are in place and if so, whether they are being adhered to is very important. You know, a little anecdote, well, it's not an anecdote, but something that, you know, just to go a little bit more into practical things and to remember Christina and myself. Two years ago we were doing a manual drilling assessment in Lagos, in Nigeria, you know, where what we saw is like literally, you know, like, like dozens and tens and kind of, I would even say hundreds of drillers, you know, drilling, you know, without having an idea of this ponder. But they were already outlined there in Nigeria. And then the sector not really being regulated with all the concerns, you know, and the risk to groundwater development. We were, Christina and myself, we were on site, you know, seeing how some drilling team were actually drilling in the backyard of a house in Lagos, drilling over a carpet, you know, and then they have to quickly change the location. And, you know, they were, then they were too quick to the train that they were building. So yes, you know, this is just to give a little bit of an idea of what we see in the film and what we're trying to do above. I pass it on to you, President, to continue with our areas. Thanks very much, I'll say. So carrying on with these six areas of engagement, another area and is around groundwater information. And one of the participants asked to know more about groundwater. And this is a problem not just in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is a global issue. Ideally, if you look at these pictures going around, let me just talk you through the pictures. Ideally, when you're drilling, the driller collects samples every meter, samples of the formation that is being drilled through. Those samples are used to develop a drilling log and used to really finalize the design as to where the casing is placed and where the screen is placed. The screen allows the water to fill the borehole to pass through. So you need to look at the material to find out where there's the water. Those borehole logs, those records that show where the water is, where the layers are, where there's clay, those should be quality assured and collected in some form of database. So we're now right at the picture on the right, the database information from the thousands, tens of thousands boreholes that are being drilled in a particular country. When that information is quality shared in that database, it can then be used to analyze and to really understand more about what's happening underground. So, okay, how do these layers change? Where's the water level? What do we expect to find here? Really to build up a picture of something which is a mystery because it's hidden. Groundwater is hidden treasure. And if the information is analyzed, it can be used to develop much more local small scale maps and descriptions, which in turn can be used by people who are trying to decide where to place boreholes, what to design, how deep to drill. So it's a continuous cycle from the soil, from the rock cuttings, from the ground, right through to drilling again. And that's just not happening enough. So there are countries with large scale drilling programs happening, or many NGOs working in drilling, but the mechanisms for collecting that information and using it to really build up a picture of what's happening underground are just not enough. So that's something that really has to change. And this is a global issue. This is not just an African issue. The second area, or the third area of engagement is really around the specifics of project design implementation and monitoring. And I see here that we have some people online who work in projects and some donors, and how projects are designed really affects the quality of the work. So the picture here on the left gives an example of a country where by the time the budgeting is finished and the contracts are signed, it's the rainy season. And in fact, what could be an eight or nine month drilling season gets compressed into six to twelve weeks. So there's a very short time frame for the drilling work to take place. It's a funnel. So you have a project design. You have a national system which funnels the drilling into a very short season. And when it's so short, it's extremely difficult to actually ensure quality. What else needs to be right? The implementation needs to be right. So that means ensuring that there is proper communication with the drillers. People understand exactly what they're doing. Clear procurement procedures, transparent, right through to the contract award so that everybody can play their role. And different programs are different. It's really making sure that you have good quality programs. And then finally, you get right through to the monitoring. And I showed you those pictures at the beginning. Actually what's needed is to know who drilled those wells, when were they drilled, exactly what happened. So that information about where things are going wrong can feed right back into the regulation of the sector. Drilling bad quality consistently, maybe they should be blacklisted. So those are some of the issues that need to be really thought through in project design. There's many more, but that's just to give you a bit of a flavor. Next area of engagement, and I'll try to finish so we can get to your questions, is around capacity. And there has particularly been a particularly strong drive towards privatization, towards private sector. So retrenchment, government staff leaving and private drillers, private consultants doing the work. However, that has not generally run alongside strengthening skills and strengthening capacity. So you have private contractors trying to get technicians, but without skills to really train them properly in drilling. Lack of apprenticeship programs. And this needs to change. And I'm really reaching out to you in engineering for change and beyond. What can the global community do to absolutely raise skills from technician level right through to project manager level? Because unless we, as a global community, raise those skills, we can never, never meet this sustainable development goals. So please, thinking caps on, what can we do to raise skills so that people who are qualified to understand what they're doing can drill, can supervise, can oversee, and can manage projects. And another aspect of capacity, of course, is equipment. So we talk a lot about borehole cameras, which can help you to see. You can put a camera down, it has a lamp. You can see a lot of what's happening in the well. But equipment such as that is very often completely absent, which makes it virtually impossible to diagnose the problem. So another key issue there around engagement. Next slide, 15, it's my slide. Last area, last of my areas. Dialogue and awareness. I'm so excited. Dialogue and awareness. Another thing which is often absent is real exchange between the government and drilling contractors and the NGO to look at specific problems, to diagnose problems, to understand and to improve the sector. I think Uganda's got a very interesting case recently because they're trying to improve the regulation of drilling consultants, of those who supervise wells and site wells. And that's really a process of dialogue between the government and the private sector to come up with a system that works. So the dialogue is absolutely fundamental to build trust, to solve problems, and also much greater awareness amongst decision makers, amongst political leaders about the realities of drilling. And as Jose mentioned, drilling is risky. There are areas where it's quite difficult to find water. Even if you're fairly sure there's always things that can go wrong. So there needs to be a real raising of global consciousness about groundwater, about drilling, about its importance. And again, being here at this webinar is a way of reaching out to you. Jose, I'm going to hand over to you again. Thank you, Karsten. So we are now in the final exagon, in the final area of engagement that we are proposing in our joint guidance note. And this is the final one, but it's obviously not a non-important one. It's actually really, really important. It's about investment. Our work in the finishing here of investment is when time or money is put into something, hoping that the returns would be greater than what was originally put in. So obviously, without the right investments in the areas of engagement that we have mentioned before, we doubt that we will see a raise in professionalism of the drilling sector. So the question that we want to raise here is, after all these explanations and this presentation is, what do you think that we need to invest in? So do you think that it could be wise just to invest only on infrastructure, you know, with this context that we have provided? Because again, you know, coming back to one of the comments at the beginning, you know, over the last few years, the last 15 years, we've seen the push for numbers and numbers and numbers and which millions and beneficiaries and the quality of construction has suffered without having investments, the right clever, strategic investments in all these areas. And it doesn't need to be all at the same time in the same place, but, you know, the right cocktail of investment in the right hexagons, let's say, you know, is what it's going to make a difference. So we need to understand in each of the contexts in which of the hexagons we put some money, you know, beyond just purely the infrastructure, so that we can say, and we can, you know, a sleeping piece or things that we are really doing the right thing to do, just not building infrastructure, as we have seen, you know, and wrapping a little bit and seeing what we've seen before is going to fall in this river within one or two years, you know. So when we have a chance and we are developing water national programs, let's really make conscious, be conscious, you know, and already at this level, let's make and think wisely and aesthetically, whether we put the money. So just with this, not preaching, and we just go the last slide where we just wanted to share with you the links to some of the video clips that we have recently been developing in partnership with Water Raid as well, with our colleagues in Water Raid. And it's a very cute and short video clips that you will, for sure, you would like if you like this subject, you know, about sighting, about supervision, construction quality, and procurement and contract management. So here are five managed video clips involved in this conference. And these are very, very useful. Our colleagues in Geneva have liked to have them handy, you know, whenever they have the chance to interact with policy makers or higher level, you know, government officials who, you know, maybe are aware sometimes or sometimes not of the issues that we are discussing here. So it's a great opportunity, you know, to, in a nice way to raise all these issues and, you know, to try to get attention to all these underlying causes, you know, that we've seen at the beginning of the presentation. That's all from our side. Just, you know, we wanted to be rigorous and we wanted to at least share some of the references that we have used for the presentation and also for the guidance. So after this, we wanted to say thank you very much for the attention and we are aware that there are some issues having already raised and questions that have been posed on the chat. So I believe that for miles like this, you know, I think we would be perhaps happy to have some, some interaction with the time allows. Thank you. Great. Thank you both. That was very interesting. But those are some great resources that you provided at the end there. I'd like to open up the question and answer session now. At TND, you can use the Q&A window. It's located below the chat window and you can type your questions for both presenters there. Some of you have already done so. And I understand from looking at the discussion going on there that some of you have sent your questions directly to the presenters. I'll go ahead and read a couple of the questions that have come in that we all can see. And then if either of you, Jose, or a person would like to jump in with a question that you have received privately, would you mind just reading the question also so we can know what you're responding to? With that said, one of the first questions that has come in, what can be done to mitigate the impacts of corrosion in areas needing groundwater access but where the pH is below 6.5? Okay. Let me try to respond to that question. It's absolutely essential that galvanized iron is not installed in those wells. So what's recommended? For example, there's a pump that's commonly used, which is the India Mark II hand pump. And there are different models, there are different types. And really what should be installed is stainless steel rising main and stainless steel pump rods that don't corrode. However, having recently looked in a particular country in West Africa at this, what's not clear is if the stainless steel on the market is actually the quality that it should be. So that's something that we, UNICEF, SCAT, as I already considered, are trying to understand a little bit more in detail. And then of course there are pumps like the AfriDev, which use PVC. Of course the issue is when installing hand pumps, it's important that there is a supply chain of spare parts. So for a specific NGO to suddenly install a completely different pump, it can be problematic because if people are not able to get the spare parts, then they can't repair the pump. So that's my kind of response to their really no galvanized iron, and we need to start looking at the quality of the stainless steel being imported into countries. Thank you. Great, thank you. Another question has come in, how do drilling companies get contracts from UNICEF? Okay, I guess I will take this one. So a couple of points just to answer the question, but before addressing the question directly, I will do it directly. So just to mention that from the UNICEF side and from the water perspective, what we want to see is that governments are more and more able to do the right planning and design and procurement processes by themselves. So obviously, the first line of support is in this direction. The government, yes, that they can handle their own procurement processes and they can procure and tender and procure themselves. And we are happy in many cases, you know, to assist them with providing technical advice on and revise all these processes. This is to start with answering the question. It is true, of course, that in many cases, for many different reasons, including capacity reasons and other reasons, we are directly implementing or we are really involved in the construction of boreholes. And here, let's say that there are two ways of doing this from our side in UNICEF. Either we partner with civil society and implementing partners, but they have the capacity to do this and this happens in many cases. Or the other line is when we do the takeover and we do handle the planning and procurement processes and tender ourselves. In this case, we have our protocol and we have our supply division based in Copenhagen and providing procurement advice to the organization. So we have a regular tender process where we open processes for every request for proposals or we do invitations to bid. And then we follow international procedures for procurement. In our case, we are right now revisiting with our colleagues in supply division all these tender process to streamline a little bit and to be consistent across country offices. As you can imagine, there are issues in terms of whether we pay or we don't pay for external discussions for supply boreholes and whether siting or supervision is included in one contract or the other. But this is literally the way we do it. Just to perhaps make another mention in different processes when we are really in developing context and we can do procurement processes and more in a pace way. As you may be aware, we are also very much responding to humanitarian crisis where we have to really streamline procurement processes to deal with these emergencies and we procure directly. I hope that I have answered the question, but it's like the protocol kind of answer, but that's the way we do it. Thank you. A couple of people are asking about whether or not there is a global database for adding records. One person asked specifically about a global database for boreholes. Are there any resources around that already? Let me respond to that. All global database for boreholes, these are borehole records, sterling logs are collated, if at all, at national level. Many countries have databases or had databases or have systems that are partially functional. And this is a question from Adam Boff here. He asked about Uganda. Uganda actually has a very good system. So what you need to do in that case, and this applies to many countries, is go to the Ministry of Water and Environment, the Directorate of Water Resources in Entebbe, and get the forms for drilling records. In fact, any private drilling company that wants to get a license has got to submit its drilling records to Entebbe in order to be able to get the license. That's how the system should work. So in Uganda there is a system set up, so it's not UNICEF, it's really the government. So go to them and find out what forms they have and make sure that you submit that information back to them. It's one of the countries which has got a very good system and a lot of information available actually on groundwater, small scale maps. Yeah, back to you Rob. Thank you. Another question, maybe you can give a ballpark. Someone would like to know how much does a groundwater project cost? Great question. Coming back to Jose's point, it depends what you include. Do you just include the drilling? Do you include the apron? Do you include the pump? Do you include the supervision, the sighting? What do you include? And the second point of course is it also depends on where you're drilling and how deep you're drilling. When I first came to this topic in 2005, I was being pushed to come up with average drilling prices for countries. And I really pushed back because the average depends on where has been drilled in the country because you have such variations. So there's a huge range of prices really depending on what you're drilling, where you're drilling. Also if you're going to work in a conflict area or an area with high risk, your drilling costs are going to go up. So I'm not going to answer the question directly. Huge range. Yeah, thanks Rob. Okay, thank you. Another interesting question that just came in is about solar pumping. The question is that it looks like the prices for those systems have really been dropping in the past decade and this person would like to know your views on whether it's a viable option. Yeah, do you want to take this question or sir, would you like me to take the question? Maybe we can take turns. I can say that from our side in units that we have just contacted an assessment on solar systems. Actually, you know, it's about to be published in the next few days. You have just run up some comments. As the question already acknowledges, the prices have gone down. What we have found out with this global assessment that we found with our interventions, units have supported interventions on solar systems. We also see a little bit of the demystification of the issues of the sustainability of the systems. You know, sometimes we have always thought that their partners were robbed or that they were destroyed, etc. So what we have found out with our assessment is actually that the issues with solar systems are more in terms of the dimension in other systems. We tend to see in many countries a copy and paste of the dimensioning of the systems and obviously that's not the idea. We also see issues around solar systems that relate to the governance and party setting and targeting the most poor and marginalized when these solar systems are linked to pipe systems. And the other issue that we see a lot is the upgrade of boreholes that were drilled to be filled with hand pumps and then are being upgraded into pipe systems. What we see is the lack of understanding of the groundwater resource. And this is a major problem because some of the obstacles that we are having may be fine with a hand pump taking an amount of water. But as soon as these systems are upgraded into solar systems and then also beyond drinking water are also feeding more irrigation systems, then we are talking about something different and then we are calling for a more thorough groundwater investigation. Nothing to add. Absolutely. Everything covered. Great. Have either of you received any private questions that I haven't asked yet that maybe I can't see on the public screen? No, I think there's more questions coming through. I see a couple of really interesting questions but nothing private. Okay, would you like to go ahead and read one of the questions and answer? Sure. Yeah, no, great question from Andrew Belko and Jose. Now we're getting into trouble. We have a professional drillers or consultants that can come out for capacity building. This is where we're trying to move into is we have an agreement running for, we'll start in April, really focusing on capacity building and what we need to get are roster, people who can work, who can provide training, who can provide skills. We already have some really great training materials, short courses. Of course that's not the same as having a proper vocational training centre or college or technical institute that goes into debt. But there are materials there. There are some good people there and we're now on a process of really trying to see who can do this because the scale of what needs to be done is huge. And of course if there are amongst those attending, if there are those of you who would like to run courses, who would like to see if you can trigger in-country processes to start, contact us and let's see how we can explore because it's about bringing together good quality people, good quality materials and resources to move this huge issue forward. Do you know what you want to add there, Jose? No, no, this question comes so nicely because this is really the discussions we are having the two of us, to try to build, sometimes we refer to, we want to build kind of a little army of colleagues who can support this. So just get in touch and let's just keep this moving. And I see we're running out of time, Jose. We'll see. Yeah, yeah. I won't add anything else. Yes, we are running out of time. We have a couple of minutes left. Is there one last quick question you'd like to take or any closing comments you'd like to make? Okay, now let me have a quick look. So I've responded to Diana to put something in the text box. Different contract types. Very good question, Anna. And I think that very much depends on the context. But one thing I would say is be very much aware of turnkey contracts where you only pay for successful boreholes. Because often, depending on what is counted, you get other things that are missing. So contracts where you have good quality supervision, making sure and supporting the pillar to do a good job, and being paid for the work that they are done. That's what I would say. I'm quite strong on that. Steve, you, citing in Dylan cannot be bothered. Absolutely. We're talking about the need for a huge cadre of experience qualified professionals. So I hope that in the next five to 10 to 15 years that we have the hundredfold, the thousandfold change in professionalism that we need in order to meet those SDGs. So all of you get your thinking caps on and let's try and move this together. Because certainly UNICEF and SCAT cannot move this alone. Anything for you to add, Jose? No, I don't think so. I'm very happy the way that this has gone on. I'm very interested in questions that I think have helped us clarify a little bit more the topic. So we're very good. Thank you so much, both. Very interesting presentation. I appreciate the time you spent with us. And that concludes our webinar. Bye. Thank you very much. Bye. Bye, Zaba. Thank you all.