The New IWA Benchmarking Framework
Content Table
Benchmarking
The first mainstream publication on benchmarking as a management tool was R.C. Camp (1989) Benchmarking: The Search for Industry Best Practices that to Superior Performance. This publication fuelled the 1990’s trend for identifying those who were best in their class and adapting their practices in the search for best performance.
At a similar time the Office of Water Services (OFWAT) was introduced in England and Wales in 1989. A lack of real competition between water companies led to OFWAT using Yardstick competition (the use of metrics to determine performance) in order to generate artificial rivalry between companies in the interest of improving performance.
The 1996 report on benchmarking by the AWWA Research Foundation depicted a water industry ruled by Xerox benchmarking and the yardstick competition created by OFWAT.
The terms ‘process’ (Xerox) and ‘metric’ (Yardstick), as applied to benchmarking, were coined. The water industry embraced this terminology and used it extensively.
However, it soon became clear that these terms were being used with a wide variety of meanings, leading to difficulties in communication between professionals working across the field. This lack of common definition meant that the terms were no longer useful unless accompanied by details of the activities they were describing.
It became clear that benchmarking specialists were in need of a common language to enable to them to forget about words and concentrate on techniques.
In 2002 a task group comprised of the members of IWA groups who had been responsible for developing the performance indicators and benchmarking manuals published to that date.
The group produced a new Manual of Best Practices: Benchmarking Water Services: Guiding Water Utilities to Excellence, co-published by the IWA and the AWWA, which was presented during the Pi2011 conference of March 2011.
The Framework
The new IWA manual provides a step-by-step guide on how to benchmark, as well as a new benchmarking framework.
After long deliberations it was decided that the old framework was too extended to achieve a common understanding and therefore a new terminology was created.
The IWA Specialist Group on Benchmarking strongly recommended abandoning the terms ‘metric benchmarking’ and ‘process benchmarking’ in favour of ‘performance assessment’ and ‘performance improvement’ for consecutive components of benchmarking.
The new terminology is designed to allow professionals to be much more precise about performance assessment and benchmarking and to also improve understanding of what benchmarking means:
“Benchmarking is a tool for performance improvement through systematic search and adaptation of leading practices”
This new framework also accommodates regulatory activities within the water industry and goes some way towards solving the problem of defining benchmarking across projects which focus on different levels within the utility: for instance, a funding institution will try to assess the overall utility performance, or at least financial or service performance, while a plant engineer might be interested in the assessment and improvement of performance for a single task within a very specific process (e.g. membrane cleaning in a micro-filtration plant).
The IWA Specialist Group on Benchmarking and Performance Assessment is determined to disseminate this new framework and terminology and contribute to better understanding among water professionals.
Related Articles
This article is adapted from ENRIQUE CABRERA JR., PETER DANE, SCOTT HASKINS and HEIMO THEURETZBACHER-FRITZ (2010) Forget ‘metric’ and ‘process’,benchmarking is being reborn: the new IWA benchmarking framework, Water21. IWA Publishing, December 2010.
Links
ENRIQUE CABRERA JR., PETER DANE, SCOTT HASKINS and HEIMO THEURETZBACHER-FRITZ are authors of Benchmarking Water Services: Guiding water utilities to excellence, IWA Publishing, 2011
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