Digitalization of Water Assets and Utilities

10:00- 11:00 am – Moderated Session

Moderator: Mrs.Menatalla Sadek, CEO Hassan Allam Utilities, IDRA Board Member

Bio: Menatalla Sadek is currently the CEO of H.A Utilities (HAU), where she lead the establishment of the company with the vision of setting up Egypt and the Region’s largest Utilities development, investment and financing vehicle for water desalination and treatment, renewable energy, and other utilities. Ms Sadek lead the efforts to establish very strong Joint ventures with the best in class global players in the various sectors that HAU is involved in. Selected partners include Lightsource BP, a 50% owned subsidiary of British Petroleum (BP) and Almar Water Solutions, a 100% owned subsidiary of Abdul Latif Jameel. Ms Sadek concluded in October 2020 the acquisition of the Ridgewood group of companies, Egypt’s largest private sector desalination player with c. 80k m3 per day of capacities over 55 plants.

Panelist: Dr. Othman Al-Najdi, SWCC General Supervisor of Partnership & Investment

Bio: Dedicating almost three decades of his admirable career to quench the empty quarter desert dried thirst, as a seawater desalination engineer and researcher in the same field where he is serving as general supervisor of partnership and investment for the world largest water producer Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) where he oversees the critical investment activities and evaluates SWCC business sectors against operation excellence practices.

Recently, Dr. Othman has been awarded a PhD degree in innovative Sustainable Technologies Engineering by the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom with a profound fortitude instigated by water scarcity. In addition to the technical base knowledge and realization that economic study is imperative to the success and sustainably of any technology, London Business School( LBS), UK has awarded him with certification in Project Financing after excelling in the rigorous LBS finance curriculum which he complemented with certifications from top of the best and advanced business institution such as Harvard Business School HBS in leadership and leading changes.

Dr. Othman has shaped his experience and knowledge of seawater desalination technologies starting from the field as a desalination operation engineer where he was able to advance to a plant manager in two years, then he appointed as SWCC procurement Manager and as a   director of production and technical affairs.

His  recognized innovative and transforming achievements and contributions have made him SWCC deputy governor of Operation and Maintenance Sector where he was managing and responsible for more than nine thousand employees operating and maintaining 30 power and desalination plants along the RedSea and Arabian Gulf  coasts, on top of an eight thousand km pipeline network of Water Transmission Systems.

Experiencing such an enriching journey that has begun from the sea and evolved through all stages of producing water such as desalination, transmission, all the way to consumers while living the growth and transformation of SWCC have shaped him into a mature professional possessing truly an eye-opener and impeccable desalination judgments and knowledge.

Panelist: Ms. Nunthinee Sundaramurthi, Principal Engineer, PUB, Singapore’s National Water Agency

Bio: Ms. Nunthinee Sundaramurthi currently leads the control and automation team digitalizing Tuas Water Reclamation Plant (WRP). In this role, she is responsible for identifying and implementing new technologies and re-engineering existing work processes to fully automate the used water treatment process and the NEWater (Singapore’s very own high-grade reclaimed water) production process, while maintaining high safety standards.

Before moving to this greenfield project in 2017, Nunthinee was the electrical section head at Kranji WRP for 7 years, where she oversaw the operations and maintenance of electrical, instrumentation and control systems, as well as asset renewal projects to keep pace with technological advancements.

Nunthinee has a BEng in Electrical Engineering from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and a MSc in Systems Engineering Management from University College London (UCL). She is a registered Chartered Engineer (Systems Engineering) and a member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET).

Panelist: Mr. Guy Meiri, Head of Business Development, IOSight

Bio: Guy is a seasoned business development professional with over 20 years of diverse experience in strategy, business development, sales and management. Guy joined IOSight in 2019 and leads business development and sales of the company’s water-specific data management and analytics solutions in global markets. Guy worked for leading companies, including IBM, Deloitte, PwC and Maccabi Healthcare focusing on digital and data analytics innovation and programs.

Guy co-founded a cleantech Start-Up which focused on clean-up of environmental resources.

Guy holds an MBA from Tel-Aviv University and an LL.B. from the Hebrew University.

Panelist: Mr. Michael Langer, Chief Products Officer, Radiflow

Bio: A renowned cyber warfare expert, Michael Langer brings over 20 years of experience in leading cyber defense initiatives for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and in defending national-grade information, telecom and other critical infrastructures.

Prior to joining Radiflow, Michael held multiple leadership positions in the IDF’s Cyber Security Technology Center, including Head of the Cyber Incident Response Team (IDF CERT), Head of Cyber Security R&D and Operations Branch and Chief Cyber Security Architect, where he played a critical role in developing the security for the IDF’s Cloud Platform and defining the cybersecurity roadmap for the IDF’s Digital Transformation program.

Michael holds an MBA and a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, and has been CISSP-certified since 2007.

Panelist: Mr. Alejandro Beivide Garcia, Head of Digital Transformation, ACCIONA

Bio: Alejandro Beivide is a 45 years old Engineer graduated from ESIDE: « Escuela Superior de Ingenieros DEUSTO », one of the most representative Engineering Universities, with 19 years’ experience in Automatization, Control, and commissioning industrial facilities. Last 17 years involved in desalination, drinking and wastewater international projects. He joined Acciona 17 years ago. During this time, he has been developing projects in different positions as Maintenance Manager, I&C Engineer, Software and Automatization Commissioning and since 2017 as Automation and Control Manager Director in Acciona Agua. In the last 10 years he has participate in some of most representative projects as SWRO Adelaide (300.000 m3/day), WWTP Atotonilco (42m3/sec), SmartWater4Europe and many others. Last year he was appointed to be also the Head of Digital Transformation of Acciona Infraestructures to lead the whole company into a digital transformation process.
Alejandro has always worked in companies with a with a strong technological component like Bridgestone, Inser Robótica, Pridesa and Acciona Agua. Projects around the 5 continents in a lot of countries.

Alejandro´s concerns, discover all the possibilities of current technology, always be a student with concerns and help to have a more sustainable world.

Beyond its technical capability, he is one of the managers and designers of CECOA (Control Center for Water), looking forward the last innovation behind the IoT, AI, Deep learning and Neuronal Networks. He has developed excellent management and interpersonal skills with all the stakeholders involved in the projects: Owner, Funding Agencies, Supervision Consultants and Administration.

11:00 – 11:20 am – Moderated Q&A