For the 100th episode of the Exec Exchange, Piers Clark speaks with Helen Puri-Starr, Project Lead for the Blueprint, and Erik Harvey, Strategic Technical Director at WaterAid. Their starting point is plain: progress on the global water crisis is happening, but too slowly. Successful projects exist, but they rarely multiply on their own. The Blueprint is WaterAid’s attempt to change that. It has two aims: to deliver services at scale in one province, and to produce a model the wider sector can adopt.

What the Blueprint sets out to do

Over five years, the Blueprint aims to reach 500,000 people in Nepal’s Madhesh Province with clean water, decent toilets, and good hygiene, working directly with the province’s water utilities.

Alongside this delivery, WaterAid is creating a global taskforce of academic, technical, and organizational experts. The taskforce will bring decades of sector experience to bear, so the resulting model is not drawn from a single project. Helen describes the intended result as a snowball effect, where success in one place builds and spreads to others.

Why Nepal, and why Madhesh

WaterAid has worked in Nepal for more than 40 years. That history has built trusted relationships at every level of government and community. Helen explains that this trust gives the organization room to test new ideas and deliver at a major scale.

The program also starts from an existing foundation, the Beacon Project in Madhesh Province, which WaterAid runs in partnership with Anglian Water. Starting from that base means faster delivery and learning from day one.

Lessons from the Beacon Project

Working with the utility in Lahan, the Beacon Project has lifted service from two hours a day to 12. It has also expanded coverage and improved water quality. Erik highlights the impact on communities including the Dalit community, where households now have clean water at home and access to well-kept, community-run toilets.

Anglian Water describes its goal as a “legacy that grows”: value that sparks work at much greater scale. That commitment has continued under new CEO Mark Thurston, who visited the project with Helen and Erik.

Competition as a driver of utility performance

The Blueprint will extend beyond the Beacon Project to nine other utilities in the province. Erik acknowledges that politics and people will make this work complex, even though the utilities operate largely under one governance system.

One of the things he most wants to learn is how positive reinforcement and incentives can get utilities to compete on service delivery, KPIs, and indicators such as non-revenue water. He points to precedents, including a partnership with Yorkshire Water. In that work, five supported utilities went on to support another 20, creating a self-sustaining model of peer improvement.

The investment case

The Blueprint seeks to raise £16.4 million over five years. Measured against the 500,000 people it will reach directly, that is less than £33 per person. Piers stresses that this is a one-time investment in infrastructure and learning built to last a generation, not an annual cost. It also supports benefits that follow from water and sanitation, including climate resilience, education, and gender equality.

The first milestone is £4 million in foundation funding from a collective of seed funders giving £250,000 or more. Helen confirms the Blueprint is a strategic priority across the WaterAid federation and is open to global philanthropists. It is also open to foundations and organizations, including utilities that could mobilize to raise funds over several years.

A blueprint that keeps evolving

Looking ahead, Erik sets aside the headline figure of 500,000 people. He hopes the partner organizations that help build the knowledge will adopt the Blueprint and bring the same ambition to their own work. He is clear it will not be a one-off document; it will evolve as it is applied in new contexts. Helen’s hope is a lasting community of funders and organizations who stay engaged with the sector beyond their initial contribution.

The Blueprint’s case rests on a simple premise: the water and sanitation crisis is too large for any one organization to solve alone. By pairing delivery at scale with a shared, evolving model, WaterAid aims to make progress spread rather than stay local.