Hi all,
In my last post, I talked about failures in the developing sector. How can we avoid such failures on our ram pump? And what if the pump fails and no one is there to repair it? Sara Kinsbergen, a PHD student from Nijmegen (Holland) has written multiple papers about working together with local partners.
The answer is conducted over 3 points. First of all, local people should be involved in the planning of local infrastructures as stated in one of my previous posts. They should be the ones with a demand for a specific installation on a location. The ones who are giving aid should design the installation in maintainable way and as close as possible to the question asked by the locals (Kinsbergen, 2007). A second point consists of involvement of inhabitants during the build-up. In this way they see exactly what the important parts are and they know how to handle with the installation. The last point is the knowledge transfer. In this part, teaching about the installation should be executed. Another important issue is to write a manual with things that could occur and how to fix them.
I personally think that using these three points is essential in trying to prevent failures. Off course, you never know what happens after you leave but you give them a chance to maintain it in the best way possible. To follow the first point, you should work from a local demand for an installation. At Humasol this is always the first step in a process so for our project this was done properly. The second part will make the social connection with the locals stronger. I think you’ll establish better knowledge with the machines, but also better social environment because you’re integrating the project in the community. The last point is the most difficult one. A good manual is essential for future maintenance or fixing and teaching about ram pumps without technical knowledge is also rather difficult. Because it has to involve so many possible failures, the manual is rather difficult to write. Specific for the ram pump, Watt has written a good manual for us to build on (Watt, 1974).
Can you come up with other possible prevention methods apart from these three? Do you think they are all relevant or not and what measures do you take against failures in your own projects?
Greetings,
Lauren
Link to research Sara Kinsbergen: http://www.ru.nl/cidin/@723032/pagina
Humasol hydraulic ram pump thesis 
Dear Lauren,
I feel a bit in a similar situation, since I am also building something that I will leave behind. The difference is that I leave a reactor behind in a university, filled with technically trained people. However, they also have no specific knowledge of my design. Therefore it was very useful for me to see your 3+1 methods. I definitely think they are all relevant. I feel that the first method is a bit missing in my project (I didn’t have a well defined demand) and it is really affecting me. The only thing I can further add to your list is that you can maybe appoint one individual who will have the responsibility over the pump. This way, this person feels more encouraged in knowing everything and taking action when something is wrong.
In my case, I will also leave behind my contact details for when people have a specific question, but I don’t know how and if you could do something similar.
Tim
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Three interesting points that would definitely already do the job! The first thing I thought of when I was reading your post is educating one or two locals about how the pump works, how it is installed and even how it is designed and the basic engineering stuff about it.. It can’t be that hard to find people who you can make the local ram pump engineers! Maybe they can even make their own in the future?
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That’s definitely the objective! As I mentioned in a previous post, “WILL HUMANITARIAN ORGANIZATIONS MAKE A DIFFERENCE?”, aid can only work if it’s finite. In my opinion, this should allways be the objective when doing humantarian work. Some good basic rules like presented here could help.
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This three points are indeed essential to prevent failures. It would be great if one or two people should get expert in the machine and learn other people how it works, so that they can maybe build their own one day. Maybe a sort of movie would clear a lot of things up from the start till the end of the building so they can always consult this video?
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I also like the idea of a video. Maybe it can be more clear than just documentation, but of course it’s more work to make it. But maybe Lauren can tell us if they have the possibilities to consult video’s rather than paper documentation. We could take it with us to the location on a tablet…
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A video manual is certainly a good idea in my opinion. But I fear not all these technologies have taken place there yet. Off course, this can be very interesting for future work. In this way you could even make an open source video manual so that it can update when new technologies or faults appear.
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