Foreword: at present, the Water Pollution Control Action Plan is to be issued and it is expected that a thousand-billion yuan market of the industry will be blooming. For Beijing Enterprises Water Group Limited (BEWG), a modern state-owned enterprise and a new state-owned enterprise dominated by the whole industry chain and technical development and application in combination of production and research and having rich experience in delicacy management of hundreds of water plants, this is definitely good news. CEO Zhou Ming of BEWG believed that BEWG could do better by virtue of new policies.

Located in No. 16, Jinshan Street, Fangzi District, Weifang City, which is known by the kite culture in the middle of Shandong Peninsula, a comprehensive sewage treatment plant with designed treatment capacity of 30,000 tons each day, covering an area of 43.8mu, is under full-speed operation, to play its environmental protection role for this UN Water Environment Demonstration City and National Environmental Protection Model City.   

In 2011, the water plant was in the crucial moment of bad management of the past, urgency in upgrading and emission reduction, great pressure of financing for reconstruction and extension and difficulty in water treatment, therefore, Beijing Enterprises Water Group Limited (BEWG) carried on this water plant under franchise and established Beijing (Weifang) Enterprises Water Purification Co., Ltd.

The new water plant and the old on were still fresh in Wang Jinali’s memory, who is the general manager of the Water Treatment Department of BEWG. According to his introduction, after BEWG took over the water plant, relying on its professional technology and delicacy management, the deeply treated sewage reached the national grade A standards and could be discharged in Yuhe River, which is a landscape river in Weifang, and reused as the landscape water. Wang Jianli said, “It contributes to the city with water resource shortage at one hand and on the other, it saves the cost for water transfer for the local government.”  

Weifang water plant project is one of the samples of win-win cooperation between BEWG and local government. As a leading professional water environment treatment comprehensive service provider, BEWG has more than 300 water environment treatment projects, serving a population of 80 million. 

Sticking to the red line of life

In the past five years, BEWG’s great-leap-forward development created BEWG phenomenon which drew much attention. Water resource management projects in cities and towns increased quickly. In recent three years, the annual increment of the water treatment operation scale has exceeded 4 million tons/day. “BEWG does not simply focus on the increment and profits, but also emphasizes management of various indicators of stocks. When it grows larger, it plays more safely and steadily.” Zhou Min said. Taking the year of 2013 as an example, BEWG purchased 36 project formerly belonged to Beijing Standard Water Company. And since official takeover, BEWG invested more than RMB 60 million Yuan to reform the technological process and eliminate equipment defects, to optimize process operation and ensure that the water discharged was stable and reach standards.   

Some insiders thought, after rapid development, how to digest and absorb the existing stock with large size is a hard test to BEWG. Li Li, executive vice president of BEWG, indicated, “The current situation is irregularity in operation scale, incoming and outgoing water quality, management degree, technological level and equipment conditions of each water plants taken over, however, we have a operation and management mode with Seven Elements, that is, taking safe operation and up-to-standard discharge as the basic management.”

As for safe operation, BEWG required each water plant to be more systematic, detailed and pragmatic in safe management and implemented such management via systems improved, plans practiced, training strengthened, inspection supervised and evaluation and competition. For these years, accidents happened in BEWG is zero and the hidden danger rectification rate is 100%.

Li Li emphasized that, BEWG had been taking the up-to-standard discharge as the essential embodiment of its social responsibilities and the most fundamental red line of sewage treatment. “We request that every subordinate water plant should always adhere to take the initiative to reach standards, not accept standards in a passive position. Ordinarily, besides reaching outgoing water standards comprehensively via technical transformation, they should focus on the incoming water quality and retrospect upstream source pollution control to eliminate external risks and hidden danger.”

It is known that, a sewage treatment plant belonging to BEWG in a certain province once found that the incoming water from upstream was irregular and it was an automobile manufacturing enterprise that discharged non-up-to-standard sewage after the plant’s investigation and they solved the problem via negotiation. “Such things are too many to recount. After BEWG took over these projects, it will coordinate with related authorities to monitor the upstream pollution source to control the incoming water quality. This way can better realize up-to-standard discharge, but also embodies our social responsibilities to truly let the government feel relieved and satisfy citizens,” Wang Jianli said.   

The Company also formulated the internal inspection system, strengthened level-to-level management to operation quality and increased weight of the water quality up-to-standard assessment by centering on the up-to-standard discharging, to ensure improved and stable self-control system in the water plants. Some insiders believed that BEWG had stepped into a rapid development period in virtuous cycle: scale investment is used to upgrading and reconstruction, which depends on abundant capital strength; and on the basis of safe operation and up-to-standard discharge, technical improvement returned the project management improvement and then realized economic operation, which made comprehensive contributions to energy saving and consumption reducing and greatly improved its market competition.  

This year, BWEG created a new management method and formulated 5 dimensions and 24 quantitative assessment indicators promoted by systematism and with quantitative indicators as strength.

New policies supporting its take-off

“Upgrading and reconstruction, energy saving and consumption reduction are the eternal themes and also two most important technical cores in the field of water resources management in cities and towns,” said by Xue Xiaofei, deputy general manager of BEWG Technique Center. Through years of internal accumulation and external introduction, BEWG has been equipped with the technological strength of independent research and promoted application serving the whole industry chain. Till now, BEWG has been supported by Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of P.R.C., Ministry of Science and Technology of P.R.C. and Beijing, regarding water resource special scientific research projects. This greatly affirmed BEWG’s technological progress and also laid a foundation for study in technical application of energy saving and consumption reducing in hundreds of water plants. For this purpose, BEWG will input tens of millions of yuan funds to special scientific researches and establish central labs and experimental bases.         

Xue Xiaofei introduced that, BEWG also established the foreign cooperation mechanism to cooperate with the domestic top scientific research institutes and colleges and universities. For example, it cooperated with Tsinghua University and established the Tsinghua University-Beijing Enterprises Water Group Limited Joint Institute for Environment Industry, to carry out large-scale demonstration and application of applicable and industrialized technologies during scientific research. In 2013, BEWG and Tsinghua University co-established Beihua Qingchuang Environmental Science and Technology Co., Ltd., collecting technologies independently developed by BEWG and introduced from other domestic and foreign scientific research institutions, to create a significant asset-light scientific and technological industrialization platform for BEWG.

Some professional insiders thought, the Action Plan to be issued was expected to promote the water source recycle reform to reevaluate the value of the sewage treatment assets of the water companies and benefit the whole wastewater reuse project industry chain. In 2014, BEWG established the first research center at ministerial and provincial-level in the industry – Beijing Wastewater Reuse Project Research Center. This Center implemented many new techniques including energy saving and consumption reducing in Beijing Daoxiang Lake wastewater reuse project. 

Li Li indicated that, BEWG closely integrated technology research and development and production practices to ensure safety and up-to-standard production in the front production and operation via science and technology. Nowadays, benefiting from government policies, BEWG will further highlight the scientific and technological value and integrate technologies independently development for many years and introduced in the future to become large and strong via technical industrialization, so as to realize technological export and provide benchmarking value and leading direction for development of the whole industry,

Professional insiders believed, implementation of the Action Plan would inject new vitality into the sewage treatment industry and more efficient sewage treatment technology and new operation and management mode of water plants are new operation increasing points. 

From Zhou Min’s perspective, this is a scarce opportunity for BEWG after last five years of rapid development.