Access Water

By David Osgood, CH2M HILL Program Manager

Efficient use of water resources is an important issue throughout the world, but is especially important in the Middle East and North Africa region. CH2M HILL has been working with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on water issues in Egypt for the past thirty years. CH2M HILL staff, through a USAID-funded project, engineered a major reform of the sector in 2004 and has continued developing and nurturing that reform to the present day through three successive projects.

Although technically a subcontractor to Chemonics International, CH2M HILL is managing the USAID-funded Water Policy and Regulatory Reform (WPRR) project which began in 2008 and will finish in 2013. Assistance to the Ministry of Housing, Utilities and Urban Development (MHUUD), and the Egyptian Water Regulatory Authority (EWRA) is provided through this project. This CH2M HILL-led project is developing the staff, structure, processes, systems and tools of the Ministry and EWRA and is proposing the strategic direction for Egypt’s water and wastewater sector. The WPRR project will also help the Government of Egypt to strengthen the policy, legal and regulatory framework for the water and wastewater sector in Egypt and improve the quality and geographic coverage of water and wastewater services.

An important component of the project is the development of a program management system. This program management system was developed in response to a need by a former Minister to track and monitor the status of the more than 2,000 water/wastewater infrastructure projects under construction at any one time.  Aiming to highlight USAID assistance to the Egyptian water sector in the area of program management, WPRR recently produced a short video on the PRiSM Arabic interface program management system and institutional support to the MHUUD. The 6-minute clip shows how the Ministry Project Monitoring and Evaluation Unit (PMEU) is using this innovative software tool to track more than 2,000 active projects, archive data on an additional 2,000 projects, and improve construction management for the water sector. I invite you to check out the video below.

Mr. Osgood has twenty-two years of successful experience as a Project Manager for development projects in Egypt and Trinidad and Tobago. For eighteen of those years he has served as the project manager for USAID funded projects in Egypt. Mr. Osgood has resided in Egypt for the last twenty-four years. He is an Arabic speaker with a good understanding of Middle East working conditions.