$14B worth of water is wasted yearly. This Filipino startup wants to cut that by a quarter

When DJ extraordinaire David Guetta sang the words “I will never make it by without you,” he may well have been referring to one of the world’s most precious resources – water. A report by the World Bank states that nearly US$14 billion worth of non-revenue water (NRW) – water that is produced but never makes it to the consumer – is wasted worldwide per year.

This problem is particularly prevalent in the Philippines. It is one of the top three concerns of water utility authorities in the country, according to Stephen Larcia, who used to work at Maynilad Water Services in Metro Manila. One of his colleagues, Mark Stanley Cleto, was the head of electromechanical design, and his job involved evaluating all the equipment purchases of the company.

Through his work, Cleto became very familiar with existing technologies used in water management systems, both local and foreign.

“There was this advanced pressure management system that he evaluated, in which he saw real value for a lot of water utility companies,” Larcia recalls. “The system was developed by another UK-based company.”

The problem, however, was that the system was really expensive. “The UK company clearly targeted the big and developed water utility companies,” Larcia explains. “So Stan thought of doing a version that would target the less developed utilities.”

Cleto brought two other colleagues into the project – Larcia and Ann Margarett Marigondon. He thought that the trio could easily put together the system, but it turned out to be too complex for them to handle.

“We realized that we had some expertise gaps. Fortunately, we were able to engage Rafael King Ramos, the guy considered as the gem of Maynilad’s water supply operations,” says Larcia. “Then the last addition was Gregorio Ortiz, who was recommended by a friend of Stan’s. It was actually just a fortunate coincidence that he was also working for Maynilad.”

Managing water distribution

The final five.

The team of five formed Hiraya Water Solutions. Having identified the inefficient operations of pumps as one of the key culprits in water wastage, they devised a pump control mechanism called the Real-Time Adjusting Pump System (R-TAP) that helps water utility companies to manage their distribution.

R-TAP takes a predictive approach when it comes to optimizing the operations of pumps. It has a self-learning algorithm that identifies and enables the most optimum operation in real-time, continuously adjusting to provide the exact needed pressure in a network at any given time.