Sultanate of Oman
Oman Drinking Water Safety Plan
PAEW
• Providing drinking water as per the
specification of Omani standard proportionate
with the population growth.
• Establishment, operate and maintained the
drinking water network and enhancing
efficiency.
• Supervise the private water desalination
company.
The World Health Organization
says:
“The most effective means of consistently
ensuring the safety of a drinking-water supply
is through the use of a comprehensive risk
assessment and risk management approach that
encompasses all steps in water supply from
catchments to consumer.”
Oman Drinking Water Safety Plan
•Omani management has got inspired by countries implemented
water safety plan, particularly an Arab country like Jordan, to
initiate the pilot project in Oman for its close study.
•PAEW Adopted this risk management approach and will
develop a Drinking Water Safety Plan that is central to the way
in which we ensure safe drinking water now and in the future.
•Thus we have got motivated to start it in Oman and will apply
it at country level.
Vision Pilot project
 Sustainable quality management approach for the
continuous delivery of safe drinking water in Oman.
 Widespread adoption in Oman.
 Regulatory requirement in drinking-water legislation
for Oman.
 Benchmark for capacity building and training
institutions.
 Building partnerships in the region.
 Establish audit capacity.
Vision Pilot project
•Demonstration project facilitates .
•Informs further development of national drinkingwater policies and legislation.
•Demonstrates feasibility of a WSP in the Omani
context.
•Provides basis for evaluating the added value.
•Contributes to long-term capacity building.
•Product:
•Fully implemented WSP
•Covering all or selected aspects of the supply chain.
WSP team building
System description
System assessment
Improvement and upgrade
Identify hazards and hazardous events
What can go wrong?
Assess and prioritize risks to public health
How important are they?
Identify additional or improved control measures
How to improve reliability and robustness?
Validate existing control measures
Are measures suitable and effective?
Establish step-wise improvement plan
What actions to plan?
Crosscheck with health-based targets
Can the water supply typically achieve these?
System control
Define operational monitoring and inspection plan
Identify if something does go wrong
Establish corrective actions and management plans
Respond if something goes wrong
Verification
Establish procedures for WSP auditing
Confirm adequacy of water safety planning
Define compliance monitoring procedures
Confirm that water quality targets are met
PERIODIC
REVIEW
Plan of activity
• Identify roles of departments from within the supply
• Identify staff undertaking particular roles
• Develop a transparent management plan:
– Define separate activities and timelines
– Number of person days required
• Review roles, responsibilities and interests of external
stakeholders
Activity & schedule matrix
Building up the WSP Team
WSP Team
WSP Team Consist of:
1. Member from the water desalination plant
2. Members from water quality department
3. Members from maintenance department
4. Members from production and distribution
department
System description
We’ve completed descriptions of water supply systems
for all our catchments, sea water and ground water, 8
water desalination plants, 23 service reservoirs and
water towers, and 320 km transmutation and 939 km
distribution network.
8
System assessment
The team has been divided into five groups according to the
regions to:
• Systematically identify hazards and corresponding events
(hazard analysis)
• Identify agents that potentially cause harm to public health
• Discover hazardous events introduce hazards or
fail to remove them:
– Technical defects or malpractices
– Improper procedures or products
– Natural Phenomenon (e.g. cyclones)
System assessment
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Interview staff in on-site operations
Analyze previous incidents or failures
Evaluate data records
Supported by sanitary inspections
Review technical literature
Discuss with other water professionals
Site visiting
Visit the system and meet on-site staff
Water leakage discovered by WSP team
during the site visit
How does it work ?
When assessing the risks to drinking water quality
we rank the likelihood and consequence of
hazardous events.
Risk characterisation
Severity
Likelihood
RISK
MATRIX
Insignificant
(Score: 1)
Minor
(Score: 2)
Moderate
(Score: 4)
Major
(Score: 8)
Catastrophic
(Score: 16)
Almost certain
(Score: 5)
5
10
20
40
80
Likely
(Score: 4)
4
8
16
32
64
Foreseeable
(Score: 3)
3
6
12
24
48
Unlikely
(Score: 2)
2
4
8
16
32
Most unlikely
(Score: 1)
1
2
4
8
16
Example of Hazard Exposé
Where we are going ?
Our WSP is key to the way in which we will
manage risks to drinking water quality in the short,
medium and long term. Risks are kept under
continual review and the effectiveness of controls
verified to make sure that the WSP remains
effective.
Our WSP enables us to identify and priorities
where we need to invest funds to maintain and
improve drinking water quality for the benefit of
our customers and stakeholders.
Lessons Learned
By the time, Water Safety Plan in Oman has been fully
implemented, only then its positive and negative lessons can
be documented. However we have already faced some
challenges, some of which are listed below:
• The overloaded schedule of the team.
• Lake of appropriate documentation process of previous
failures.
• Recently implemented change of organizational structure in
PAEW which resulted in relocating and changing of some key
players in WSP team
Our Embracing
The WSP approach to proactive and
effective risk management is an important
part of our journey to become a world
class operator of water infrastructure.
Thank You