First online course on costing sustainable WASH services in October 2012

Published on: 17/07/2012

WASHCost is developing a free online course to assist water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) professionals around to world with applying life-cycle costing in their work and organisation. The online course can be used by sector professionals with little or no experience of life-cycle costing. Participants can gain a basic understanding of life-cycle costing and how the approach can be applied.

The costing sustainable services online course has three modules:

• Module 1 What is a life-cycle cost approach?; introduces life-cycle costing, its underlying principles and key components.
• Module 2 Using a life-cycle cost approach; gives ideas and tools on how life-cycle costing can be adapted and integrated in the work of many different types of organisations and government institutions.
• Module 3 Analysing life-cycle costs and service levels; explains how life-cycle costs and service levels can be analysed in order for it to be used as part of budgeting and planning of sustainable water and sanitation service delivery.

Each of the three modules consists of a series of sessions centred on a specific theme. Each session combines self-study through reading materials in the form of two-page hand outs, links to detailed working papers with interactive exercises as well as videos. Each of the three modules of the online course takes between four to eight hours to complete.

Depending on knowledge and interest, users can choose which sessions, exercises and hand outs are of use. The interactive exercises assist users to start to apply life-cycle costing in their own work. As part of the course, participants can analyse their own life-cycle costs and service level information and create their own water and sanitation service ladders with customised service levels and service delivery models.

Interested WASH sector professionals can go through each of the three modules of the online course individually or as a group. The first possibility to follow the costing sustainable service on line course as a group with guidance from IRC is aimed at October of 2012.

For more information please contact training@irc.nl.

Jeske Verhoeven
9 July 2012