IRC Associate
Richard Franceys, a Chartered Civil Engineer with an MBA, specialises in institutional development and finance for the water supply and sanitation sector to facilitate universal services with a particular focus on the needs of the poor. Areas of interest include commercialisation & tariff development, economic and financial analysis, institutional analysis, change management of water utilities and public private partnerships, customer involvement & economic regulation in addition to water and sanitation techniques for serving low-income urban settlements. He has investigated aspects of these issues with over 100 utilities in over 60 countries.
For ten years Dr Franceys directed the Global Water Policy and Management MSc programme, Cranfield University, UK, following his time at IHE, Delft and WEDC, Loughborough. Dr Franceys was for 17 years, a ‘Local Consumer Advocate/Regional Member’ with the Consumer Council for Water and its predecessor WaterVoice/CSC, the statutory customer representative in England and Wales, initially part of OFWAT, the water economic regulator. His particular support to CCWater focused upon the financing costs of the privatized utilities in England and Wales and the subsequent effect on consumer tariffs. He has been closely involved in the establishment of WSUP (Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor) and was co-initiator of the Change Management Forum and the ‘24x7’ movement in India.
Richard has worked with IRC on a number of projects, as international adviser on the WASHCost project, directing the Australian DFAT ’Community Water Plus’ research project in India, 2014-2016, and most recently supporting the India office in the ‘Technical Assistance to WATCO [Odisha] for implementation of DRINK TO TAP initiative’.
During 2018-2020 he has acted as Institutional Change Management specialist for MCCU through ASI, supporting Guma Valley Water Company, Freetown in their MCC Threshold Programme. In 2017-18 Dr Franceys acted as the Services Management to the Poor specialist with the Cowater Technical Assistance programme to Lusaka Water and Sewerage Company under the MCA Zambia compact for the Lusaka Water Supply, Sanitation and Drainage Project. He has recently completed three projects for different clients on aspects of ‘Regulating Faecal Sludge Management’, including the preparation of “Referee! - Responsibilities, regulations and regulating for urban sanitation’, for WSUP.
His major publications include:
The report gives recommendations on what needs to done to achieve the goal of "full coverage" for water, sanitation, hygiene, and waste management... Read more...
Recommendations for hand hygiene in public places and institutions; hand hygiene in the local governance process; hand hygiene promotion strategy;... Read more...
Policy recommendations for the Indian union government and ministries for water, health, education, women and child development, and local government. Read more...
Policy recommendations for the Indian state government of Odisha and its departments for drinking water and local government, health, education, and... Read more...
The SMART market-based approach is contributing to SDG 6 and beyond. Its impact is significant, but localised. Read more...
Drawing from 10 years of experience, Insights into the various perspectives of partners, the different types of partnerships and the partnering... Read more...
All the learning alliances continue functioning at generally healthy — albeit varying — levels of interaction, particularly when considering the... Read more...
Measuring change over time in the relationships and network structure of learning alliances in four separate Ethiopian locations in USAID's... Read more...
This Research Review provides an overview of subsidy targeting strategies and the conditions under which they have proven successful or not, drawing... Read more...
Enhanced capacity building initiatives are needed for Administrators, Technocrats and Elected Representatives, especially at the operational levels... Read more...
This report presents a theoretical cost-to-serve by Safe Water Enterprises (SWEs) for the estimated 3.8 billion people without safely treated water. Read more...
Human development and human rights' approaches can benefit each other mutually to improve international and local monitoring systems for water,... Read more...
This research focuses on the enabling support services and the indicative cost of such support services in enabling the successful community... Read more...
This case study explores how a community in Kerala manages its own service delivery in a professional manner. Read more...
This research report describes the community management of successful drinking water supply systems in Meghalaya. Read more...
The best performing two Gram Panchayats, Melli Dara Paiyong and Gerethang Labing, and one Ward (Zitlang) Water User Association are studied in detail... Read more...
This study assesses a project in Uttarakhand during which water schemes and rural sanitations were developed to address the water crisis in this... Read more...
This report analyses an Indo-German bilateral pilot project concerning community water supply in Himachal Pradesh, during which villages were... Read more...