Company Releases Forty Page Roadmap For Creating A Roadmap To Address The Existing Roadmap’s Deficiencies
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
Maynilad Announces Water Service Improvement Plan That Improves The Plan For Improving Water Service
MANILA — Maynilad Water Services released Tuesday a forty-page document titled the Enhanced Service Delivery Framework, which its communications office described as “a comprehensive roadmap for the development of a roadmap to address the operational gaps identified in the 2022 Comprehensive Service Improvement Roadmap, which itself was developed to address the gaps identified in the 2019 Strategic Improvement Plan.”
The new framework, presented at a press conference at Maynilad headquarters in Quezon City, outlines a three-phase approach. Phase One, lasting eighteen months, involves “assessment and stakeholder consultation to identify the key parameters of the improvement roadmap.” Phase Two, lasting twelve months, involves “development of the improvement roadmap based on Phase One findings.” Phase Three, whose duration is described as “to be determined based on the roadmap developed in Phase Two,” involves “implementation of improvements consistent with the roadmap.”
Maynilad President Alejandro Gutierrez-Navarro described the framework as “the most rigorous planning process we have undertaken.” He noted that previous plans had been developed without the benefit of a preliminary assessment phase, which had been “a significant gap in our planning architecture.” The new framework corrects this gap by adding a preliminary assessment of the preliminary assessment to be conducted before the assessment.
“We have learned,” President Gutierrez-Navarro said, “that you cannot improve service without first understanding how to improve service. And you cannot understand how to improve service without first assessing what you need to understand. The Enhanced Service Delivery Framework gives us the structure to do this properly.”
The Previous Plans
The document traces the history of Maynilad’s improvement planning, beginning with the 2019 Strategic Improvement Plan, which identified fourteen operational gaps and proposed twenty-eight improvement initiatives. Of the twenty-eight initiatives, the document notes that eleven were implemented in modified form, eight were found to require further planning before implementation could begin, seven were deferred pending regulatory approvals that have not yet been received, and two were “superseded by subsequent planning processes.”
The 2022 Comprehensive Service Improvement Roadmap was developed to address the gaps left by the 2019 plan’s partial implementation. The 2022 roadmap identified sixteen operational gaps, twelve of which overlapped with the 2019 plan’s gaps and four of which were new gaps identified during the 2022 process. Of the 2022 roadmap’s thirty-two improvement initiatives, seven have been implemented, ten are in various planning stages, nine are pending regulatory action, four are under review, and two are “under enhanced review,” which the document does not define differently from regular review.
This pattern of improvement planning that identifies gaps, proposes initiatives, partially implements them, and then requires additional planning to address the remaining gaps is consistent with a long tradition in utility management in which the planning infrastructure grows more sophisticated while the underlying service improvements remain partial.
Customer Reaction
Maynilad customers contacted Wednesday, several of whom have experienced interrupted water service in recent months, expressed reactions ranging from weary familiarity to a specific kind of fury that appears to have been refined through repeated exposure to utility improvement plans. One Valenzuela City resident who has had non-continuous water service since 2021 told reporters she had “read the 2019 plan, the 2022 plan, and now there is a 2024 plan” and that she was “beginning to understand that the plan is the service.”
Another customer, in Parañaque, said he had called the Maynilad hotline about his interrupted service and had been told by a customer service representative that “an improvement initiative addressing this concern is currently in the planning phase.” He said he had asked which improvement initiative, from which plan, and had been given a reference number.
He still has interrupted service. He has the reference number.
The Regulatory Response
The Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System, which regulates Maynilad’s operations, issued a statement Tuesday saying it had received the Enhanced Service Delivery Framework and was “reviewing it for consistency with the company’s regulatory commitments.” The review, the MWSS said, would be completed “in the ordinary course of the regulatory process.”
The MWSS did not specify the duration of the ordinary course of the regulatory process. Previous MWSS reviews of Maynilad planning documents have, by available records, taken between four months and two years. This is consistent with a wider pattern in which regulatory review timelines are described in generic terms that provide limited information about actual processing speeds.
What The Plan Actually Promises
The Enhanced Service Delivery Framework, read carefully, promises the following in specific terms: a Phase One assessment to be conducted over eighteen months; a Phase Two roadmap to be developed over twelve months; and a Phase Three implementation whose parameters will be determined after the roadmap is developed. The framework does not promise any specific service improvement within any specific timeframe. It promises, instead, a process by which specific service improvements may eventually be promised.
President Gutierrez-Navarro, asked whether customers could expect specific improvements within a specific timeframe, said the framework was “designed to create the conditions for meaningful improvement commitments” and that “specific commitments would be developed as part of the Phase Two roadmap process.”
For more on Philippine utility service planning, see The Daily Mash for related British water company improvement coverage.
The Phase One assessment begins next month. The water service continues as currently configured.