Participation

The IB2010-benchmarking exercise

In 2011, the European Benchmarking Co-operation organises its next international benchmarking exercise for water services. The exercise covers data of 2010 and is a great opportunity to get a closer picture of your utility's performance and identify ways for improvement in an international setting.

The benchmarking activitiy started with an orientation & training workshop, in connection to the IWA benchmarking conference Pi2011 from 14-16 March 2011 in Valencia, Spain. This workshop targeted especially at those who are (relatively) new to benchmarking and wished to be informed about the EBC's benchmarking programme and the IB2010 exercise in particular.
The exercise runs from Mid April to December 2011, in order to have results before the end of the year.

IB2010 targets (primarily) at European water utilities, although utilties from outside Europe are welcome to participate and to benefit from it.
Click here to download the letter of invitation and the project plan.

Why participate?
Water utilities can benefit from the programme in several ways.

At first, the programme gives you the opportunity to look at the performance of your own utility from a different perspective. Next, you are able to compare your performance with that of European peers. By actively participating in the programme and the utilities' network, you can learn from leading practices and adapt these to your own situation. Finally, the programme provides you with objective performance information you can use for communication with stakeholders.

Participants can choose to benchmark at the level of detail that best fits the availablility of data, benchmarking experience, available resources and ambition. EBC's benchmarking programme offers three particpation levels: basic, standard or advanced. Obviously, utilities can benefit most by analysing their performance in more detail. We encourage utilities to join at least the standard level!

Via the login button on the homepage participants can enter a dedicated application, to submit the required data and view benchmarking results on-line.

Example of on-line data-entry:

Example of on-line reporting:

Deliverables of the project are:

• an orientation & training workshop about the programme, the benchmarking process and the methodology
• a dedicated help-desk for guidance to participants
• individual (confidential) management summaries in which utilities, for selected key performance indicators, are compared with other participants in an anonymous way
• an international benchmarking workshop for discussing results, exchanging best practices, networking and preparing next steps for improvement
• possibility to produce full (anonymous) listing of results on-line, with grouping and filtering possibilities for tailored analysis (valid until one year after finalising the project)
• an anonymous public report, to inform stakeholders about the benchmarking programme, the participants and the main results at group level
• project evaluation
  

Project outline
Project outline in terms of main activities/milestones and planning:

Conditions
To cover the project costs, participants pay a fee of € 8.500,-

Since the EBC-partners also want to encourage smaller utilities (less than 100.000 inhabitants) to participate, these utilities pay a reduced fee of € 1.250, - if they just join the basic level.

The EFQM European Benchmarking Code of Conduct is applicable to the project.

Registration
If you wish to register, please complete and send us the registration form.  

More information
For more information, please contact us at info@waterbenchmark.org.