Water distribution networks play a critical role in protecting the resource of drinking water. Drinking water is a scarce resource, and it is essential to protect it from contamination, pollution, and overuse. A safe and adequate water distribution network is designed to capture, treat, and distribute water from the source to the end-user, while minimizing the risk of contamination and waste. This is essential to protect public health and prevent the spread of waterborne diseases.

Well maintained water networks are also crucial for the sustainable use of the resource by ensuring that water is delivered efficiently and that losses are minimized. This is achieved through measures such as leak detection, pressure management, and water metering, which help to reduce the amount of water lost through leaks and unauthorized use. Finally, water networks are essential for ensuring that drinking water is accessible to all members of society. This includes safeguarding that water service is affordable and that households have access to safe and reliable water sources, regardless of their location or socio-economic status. In conclusion, water networks play a critical role in protecting the resource of drinking water. For us the water and sanitation crisis is a complex and multifaceted challenge that requires a collaborative effort from all stakeholders. We believe that an essential component of solving the water and sanitation issues is connected to functional water networks. Therefore, we are proud to be of service to local communities and state agencies during their efforts to construct new and/or to rehabilitate existing water networks.

Please follow the link for a selection of our projects in the field of water supply and wastewater networks.

Inhambane and Maxixe are two cities located in the Inhambane Province of Mozambique, and they are highly vulnerable to the effects of storms, flooding, and sea-level rise due to their coastal locations. The goal of the project is to develop a comprehensive plan for these cities which will improve their infrastructure and provide protection from the effects of these natural disasters.

Our services include an analysis of the existing infrastructure and systems in place in both cities, as well as a review of the current coastal protection measures. In addition, we are conducting a detailed assessment of the social and economic impacts of the proposed coastal protection measures. The project considers developing economic opportunities and stakeholder participation. The study will provide to our client a comprehensive plan for the implementation of the proposed coastal protection.

Following heavy rains, floods and hurricane winds over the past years in Malawi around one million people were affected with deaths and injuries in large number reported. The global warming and climate change have contributed to the returning disasters and have triggered significant damage to Malawi’s educational infrastructure including public primary schools, teachers’ houses, furniture and textbooks. Where buildings were left standing, many classrooms were converted to shelters for approx. 90,000 displaced people, whose homes had been swept by the floods.

To restore effective teaching and learning in the affected areas, CES Consulting Engineers is supporting Malawi Government to rebuild school facilities with an emphasis of “building back better” with new more resilient structures and WASH facilities more responsive to the safety needs of boys and girls with financial support funded by the German Financial Cooperation through the Education Services Joint Fund.

At a gala dinner event held in Geneva on 12 September 2022, the International Federation of Consulting Engineers FIDIC announced the three winners of the Award “Outstanding Project of the Year” in the three categories small, medium and large. Our Managing Director Dr.-Ing. Ralf Meyerhoff participated on behalf of CES and had the honour of receiving the coveted trophy for small projects.

Despite the seamless and highly successful implementation of the project and the great impact it had on the beneficiary population, the award came a bit as a surprise, as Project Director Matthias Fritz pointed out: “The project is not a typical civil engineering project and we prevailed against major international competition. Usually, prizes go to major infrastructure projects such as bridges, airports or tunnels. In our case, however, the special challenges in the context of international cooperation were recognised. The achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals has also become especially prominent.”

Indeed, this year’s 28 shortlisted projects were covering all the 17 SDGs goals across a significant range of project values.

FIDIC CEO Dr. Nelson Ogunshakin emphasized during his speech: “The strength of this year’s winners is a testament to the enduring excellence of the work of consulting engineers and the value that our industry brings to society by delivering excellent construction and infrastructure projects that transform people’s lives.”

Sustainable Land Management in Somaliland is a project to save the Biji catchment area from erosion, and to improve rainwater harvesting and storage of water for drinking, food security and livestock. This catchment area links to aquifers that represent the main water resource for the region’s population, making recharge of these aquifers a vital aim.

The warming stripes are a visual representation of how temperature has changed in locations around the world. They were created by Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist from the University of Reading in the UK. He also created the „warming spiral“ graphic that was used during the closing ceremonies of the Rio Olympics. Each stripe represents a year. Blue means it’s colder than average. White means it’s about average. Pink means it’s warmer. And red means it’s a LOT warmer!

Groundwater provides almost half of all the drinking water worldwide, about 40% of the water for irrigated agriculture and about 1/3 of the water supply required for industry. It sustains ecosystems, maintains the baseflow of rivers and prevents land subsidence and seawater intrusion. Groundwater is a key resource for the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Agenda for 2030 (UN Water). At CES, the responsible use and protection of groundwater of groundwater is deeply embedded into our understanding of implementing sustainable water supply, wastewater and hydraulic engineering projects.

Water related projects are the core competence of CES. The following examples of our ongoing worldwide projects cover the complete water cycle:

• Supply with groundwater to refugee settlement and host communities in Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda
• Improvement of water supply infrastructure in Laos, Mozambique and Saint Lucia
• Water loss reduction in Peru, Moldova and Tanzania
• Integrated Water Resource Management and irrigation in Armenia, Bolivia and Ecuador
• Institutional strengthening of water and wastewater operators in Albania, Bolivia and Kenia  
• Wastewater projects in Egypt, Somaliland, Vietnam and Zambia
• Sludge Treatment in Ethiopia and Rwanda

The project’s objective aims to achieve the modernization of irrigation systems, as well as other measures for the protection of the water resources of the province. The sustainability of the investments is intended to be achieved through the involvement and technical assistance of beneficiary groups and organizations and the establishment of sustainable marketing chains.

Tungurahua is a province with very fertile and productive lands, because of the influence of the volcano with the same name. Agricultural lands cannot be cultivated without supplementary irrigation, which farmers apply mostly in the traditional way by gravity.

Since the available water in the natural sources is no longer sufficient to irrigate all area, the provincial government promoted the change to more efficient pressurized irrigation methods since 2010. During this first phase of the project with assistance of CES, a smart methodology was developed to transform gravity irrigation systems to pressurized irrigation, through which the irrigation area was doubled without increasing water extraction from the sources in the vulnerable paramos.

The very promising results of the pilot phase led to the extension of the project with the now started second phase comprising pressurized irrigation of 2000 hectares from 4000 farmer families. The project is financed by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) via KfW Development Bank with 19 million Euros and contributions of €3.5 million from the province and €2.5 million from the beneficiaries.

The Consulting services of CES commenced on August 1, 2021 and will have a duration of 4 years. The scope of work comprises among others: provide technical and methodological assistance to the provincial government in the management, planning, implementation, supervision and monitoring of the program at a conceptual, technical, organizational, administrative, and financial level. In addition to technical support in the irrigation area, environmental studies and watershed conservation are important topics in consulting services.

In the meantime, CES has registered a branch office in Ecuador for the execution of the mentioned irrigation project as well as for upcoming project. Besides CES’ presence in Peru and Bolivia with branch offices counting on almost 50 years of sustained and successful activity, our new branch in Ecuador is our third one in Latin America.

Quality Education is one of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. Education is a key factor to escaping poverty. Despite progress made in the last decade, nearly one fifth of the global population in the relevant age group has no access to schools. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic now jeopardizes hard won gains made in improving global education.

In this context it is even more important that in Niger, one of the poorest countries worldwide, more than 200 new classrooms could be handed over to the beneficiaries despite the pandemic in the final stage of the construction.

The project was carried out in Niamey as well as in the rural regions of Tillabéri and Tahoua, both partly very remote and characterised by unstable security. It included the construction of primary school classrooms, latrines and housing for teachers, as well as equipping school furniture and equipment for servicing, maintenance and education. The project created 126 classrooms in Niamey and 120 classrooms in the rural regions of Tillabéry and Tahoua, providing a total of 12,600 school places in 41 primary schools.

The Programme further included accompanying measures for the promotion of girls’ schooling as well as strengthening the communities, namely by empowering the local parent committees in the creation of activities in the new school buildings to generate additional income. These measures contribute to more confidence in the value of education and to solving the problems of the schooling of their children.

Just in line with this year’s slogan, we are continuously working on the development and implementation of sustainable water and sanitation solutions aiming to improve the water quality at various locations worldwide. Our efforts contribute to the minimization of anthropogenic impacts on the nature and encourage the protection of natural water resources which are essential for the conservation of the biodiversity on our planet. Hence, we can proudly say „We’re part of the solution #ForNature.“

Kenya – Lake Nakuru National Park Biodiversity Conservation Project

At CES our worldwide operating water supply, wastewater and hydraulic engineering teams do their very best to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 6 “Clean water and sanitation”. Clean, accessible and reliable water supply as well as sound wastewater discharge and treatment are the key to improved living conditions and sound environmental protection!

Goal 6 infographic, source: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2020/

As a participant of the UN Global compact initiative, we underline the importance of the UN sustainable development goals and we committed ourselves to the ten principles of the UN Global compact initiative.

We believe in improving living conditions
and that stable and balanced societies need
well-functioning public infrastructure

A multinational team of CES experts did not only supply urgently required building and workman’s material but also carried out several renovation works by themselves. The works were implemented in cooperation with patient local craftsmen. Besides painting works, new benches for the kindergarten were crafted and painted, new basketball hoops and goal nets were installed and more than 20 trees have been planted in the school garden. The upgrade of the sanitary and water supply facilities was done by a local construction company.

This year we decided to use our annual donation for upgrading a school located in El Khatara Al Soghra Village in Sharkia/Egypt. The identification of this specific school was the result of a stages wise selection process.
In a first step, 12 schools were identified. After several site visits to the proposed schools, the Shaeer primary and preparatory School with a nursery in Sharkia Governorate has been selected in cooperation between CES experts and Sharkia PIU. The school is located in El Khatara Al Soghra Village.

A committee for the school renovation has been established to identify the required works. The committee consisted of: School Headmaster, Representatives for school teachers, Representatives for Parents Board and a Representative for Local Municipality Unit “Contact Person” .

The following scope of works was defined:

1. Plumbing and rehabilitation works for several bathrooms at the school building;
2. Outside painting works;
3. Carpentry works for desks and chairs of the nursery;
4. Renovation of the playground, enabling football, basketball and volleyball;
5. Provision of toys for the nursery as well as footballs, volleyballs and basketballs.

The global team of CES thanks all participants for their efforts and commitment.