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As Director Operations of the Marrakech WWTP, I was responsible for the daily management of the Operation & Maintenance activities of this 1.3 million IE treating waste water treatment plant. Leading a local crew of more than 35 Waterleau employees and more than 15 subcontractors, I looked after the well-being of all aspects of the plant, including process, production, security, maintenance, laboratory, procurement, finance, as well as customer relations. This cocktail made for a very interesting and varying job, because every day brought something new. Some of my key tasks entailed reporting to the Belgian management, solving typical O&M problems like spare parts procurement or planning partial shutdowns for interventions, and day-to-day follow-up of processes (primary treatment, activated sludge, digestion, ...).

After my internal training as a Sales Engineer, I finally got to hit the road. My responsibilities included visiting new and existing Xylem customers, active in water treatment, and presenting the extensive Xylem product portfolio. Though I did visit some Dutch-speaking clients, my region expanded more to the French-speaking part of the country.

As an internal Sales Engineer in the Treatment division, I was charged with making quotations for our clients. Xylem offers a wide variety of technical equipment, used in waste water treatment plants, such as pumps, mixers, aeration systems, disinfection systems, etc. With my background and experience gathered in Marrakech (with my former employer Waterleau), I know how a WWTP is constructed and operated and what is important for end-users of the different Xylem products. Thus I could provide more technically correct quotations to our clients. I assisted different customers in their design and allowed them to choose the best solution for their water-related problems.

As a Process Manager, I was entrusted with the well-being of the process of the wastewater treatment plant of the city of Marrakech. This WWTP treats the wastewater of 1.3 million inhabitant equivalents, corresponding with a daily flow of more than 100.000 cubic metres. The main treatment steps of the water line are screening, sand and fat trap, primary decantation, activated sludge system, clarification and a tertiary treatment including coagulation, floculation, sand filtration, UV and chlorine disinfection. All by-products are treated further on-site, such as primary and secundary sludge, sand, fats/oils/greases, ... The different sludge streams are first concentrated by gravity or dissolved air flottation, before being fed to digestors. The digested sludge is dehydrated by beltpresses and removed. The biogas from the digestion is treated and reused in cogeneration units for the production of electricity and heat. All forms of odour are also treated locally.During the startup of the plant, I was in charge of the commissioning and startup of the secondary treatment. A lab crew was chosen under my supervision and started doing daily analyses. Once stable operation was obtained, I oversaw the global process and made adjustments, where necessary, in close communication with the production and the analysis departments. Reporting to the internal management of Waterleau and the client with its experts was one of my major tasks. I adapted Process and Instrumentation Diagrammes and the Functional Analysis, where necessary, and wrote an entire manual describing the full installation from A to Z, so the future operators can be fully aware of how the installation functions. The plant officially went in operation in January 2012, and I stayed on-site for five more months during this transitional phase, before returning to Belgium.This summarizes my work as a Process Manager at the WWTP of Marrakech, but in reality there was a lot more to the job than described here.

As a Process Engineer, I was responsible for the R&D department at Wespelaar. This entailed the daily management of multiple small-scale test installations, simulating specific wastewater treatment processes, like nitrification and denitrification of difficult wastewaters, rich in nitrogen. A set-up frequently used in our research was a membrane bioreactor, to test our own membrane production, together with VITO and Agfa. Another key responsibility was the follow-up of the Operation and Maintenance contract of the wastewater treatment plant at Heinz, Turnhout. I provided process follow-up through grab sample analysis and determined dosages of chemicals. Maintenance was done once a year and when necessary, and several improvements were installed during my time there.Last but not least, water and sludge samples from our projects across the world were sent to our lab in Wespelaar, in order to determine chemical composition or sludge activity.