A Bird's Eye View

In the midst of today's work our team took a moment to step back from the project and meet with Ana, the Director of our partner organization ADICAY. She reviewed our progress thus far and took a moment to share insights into why their team made changes from the design that we originally shared with them. Our engineers had opted for a piping layout that looped back on itself to provide backup supply lines incase one side failed. Ana explained that in order to maintain the system and ensure long life of the water utility every member in the community must provide some type of payment; be it labor or an installation fee. The branching system they chose fosters community cooperation and avoids conflicts that may arise from the temptation to cut into an existing line.

We are so thankful for their willingness to share these insights which teach our students how cultural and social factors can and should inform engineering design. In the midst of all of the hustle and bustle of putting in pipe and digging trenches it was refreshing to zoom out and look at the big picture from a birds eye view.

Also... check out this areal picture of the valley we are working in!