SUISSE - FES - Long term partnership between FES (Swiss Waste Water Treatment Plant operators organisation) and International Office for Water

In 1990, FES required the IOW assistance to manage professional training courses about sludge treatment processes in Swiss. The collaboration started. In 1992, FES requested IOW to complete sludge treatment training courses by an additional part about the water treatment processes. From 1993 to 2000, this partnership has been applied and IOW was completely involved in the Swiss professional training of Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP) operators and managers.

In 2002, the Switzerland confederation decided to promote a specific qualification and diploma for WWTP managers. IOW requested again by the FES, was involved in the conception of a complete new training courses. Tasks for IOW were :

• Conception of the new qualification courses. Implementation of the Swiss training standards in this new courses was needed.
• Conception of the assessment, required to obtain the official Swiss diploma of WWTP manager.
• Completion of trainers and trainees materials …
• Achievement of majority of technical training courses (10 weeks of training each 2 years – 80 candidate – 19 qualifications delivered)
• Participation of the qualification process (IOW provided 4 experts as official examinators during the examination stage.

More than 500 operators and managers were trained by IOW since 1990.