Worm into Water Blog

When a laboratory method is simple, robust and effective, legislators are keen to certify the method. And certification is a powerful way to guarantee reproducible results that can be used to enforce regulations. In the detection of legionella in drinking water, the culture method has been and still is the only certified method for detection. In the Netherlands, a new emerging problem has come up, being the contamination of people with Legionellose from Legionella in waste water treatment plants. Although these cases happened in 2013 and 2016, last summer the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) has identified tens of waste water treatment plants to be a high risk for public health, mainly industrial plants, with animal compounds in the influent and higher temperatures (30-38 degrees Celsius). What Dutch and European societies need, is the application of emerging technologies for a rapid and reliable measurement for detection of Legionella in waste water. Thi

I have this very clear memory. I must have been 4 or 5 years old, sitting behind a small wooden table in the light class room with my fellow toddlers. In front of me several coloured papers, and myself using a small pair of pinking shears, turning the paper into smaller useless pieces. At this point I remember I asked the teacher: "why do I need to learn this?" I don not remember her answer, but it would not have been the last time to ask myself that same question: why? I need to admit, when I went to high school the frequency of the question dropped significantly compared to primary school, but still I have no clue what learning Old Greek has contributed to my life. So every time a lesson pays out, I'm truly pleased in retro perspective. And today was pay out time again! In modern history classes I was taught that after the second world war the The Netherlands turned into a separated society. People withdrew in their silos that were often faith based. The catholic boys p

I love delivering consultancy. And I love working in situations with many uncertainties, many variables, too few limiting or guiding conditions. And that's why I love the phase I'm in with Spatial Insight, the small assetmanagement/data science consultancy in Haarlem. Shaping a consultancy, or more concise, launching a well known Dutch business into the European market, is a big step into the unknown. So... I need to start with a more compelling website. No, wait. We need to have a proposal template, in case our pitch resonates and people ask for more. No no no, lean-up startup prescribes going out there, speaking with your targeted clients first. But we can't! We don't have a strategy yet, we need strategy, we definitely need a strategy! A Strategy, what type of business do we intend to be? We are working with a trusted partner in an international tender, and we have made it to the last round, just two parties left in the race. We're battling with a Big Name Global

Online sources learn me that it was Andy Warhol in 1968 who predicted that "in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes". I assume Andy had in mind that it was cumulative in one's total life span, allowing someone to gather seconds or minutes here and there that add up to this exact amount. Since 1968 the world population has more than doubled, so you could wonder if we should be grateful with 7,5 minutes already, knowing the impact will be more than double. I like to see glasses to be half full rather than half empty. Despite the truly heartbreaking stories worldwide and in my near surroundings, corona has brought good things as well. The meetings I organise with my team for the Dutch water and environmental technology companies, used to be physical meetings. More and more I realise I hate agendas, minutes, action list and disappointments about the attendance rates. So different now, with monthly video calls of less than an hour, exactly long enough to ch

So here I am . My double ice-skates have been tied tightly under my winter boots, standing behind the chair that was put in front of me on the ice of the small pond nearby . Encouraged by beloved ones who sincerely hoped I could make the first few meters without any support. Going forward slowly without falling. The exact same feeling I had 40 years ago when entering the ice-skating domain, I feel now entering the blog space. Just checked out Piers’ notes edition 186, which makes me very humble. But Piers must have started with edition 1 one day himself, so let’s kick ass here!   This week I heard about the remarkable results of Dutch drinking water utility Oasen in reducing leakages of their infrastructure network. Not the bare fact that they reduced their non-revenue water from 6,5% to the incredible low 4%, but the way they managed to do so. The first thing the asset engineers did was proposing to the management team that no more than 50% of the pipe replacements would be undertak