Risk Assessment for Safe Drinking Water Supplies - Global Drinking Water Management and Conservation - page 136

established, Icelandic Waterworks began applying it as a preventative approach for
water safety management in 1997. There are many towns in Iceland that imple-
mented this system including: Reykjavik and Vestmannaeyjar (in May 1997),
Akranes (in April 2003) and Borgarnes (in 2004). At the critical control points for
the towns, minor corrective actions and additional control measures were applied to
drinking water management (Gunnarsd ó ttir and Gissurarson 2008 ). Since Icelandic

Waterworks initial attempt to apply the HACCP was too complex in structure,

Samorka developed a simpler approach in cooperation with four small waterworks
in 2004, which they called the

'

five-step mini HACCP plan (Gunnarsd ó ttir 2012 ).

The five-step mini HACCP included all the critical elements such as risk assess-

ment, procedures for maintenance, control at critical points and response to devi-
ations (Gunnarsd ttir 2012 ). The initial implementation of the mini HACCP

program was a success for Icelandic waterworks, speci

ó

cally through an increased
awareness of the importance of protecting water resources, and also a number of
corrective actions (Gunnarsd ó ttir and Gissurarson 2008 ). However, the first audit

conducted on Iceland s implementation of the mini HACCP in some towns revealed

a lack of an external audit, and inadequate internal self-regulation and control
(Gunnarsd

'

ó

ttir and Gissurarson 2008 ).
In order to assess the performance of water utilities as well as analyze the
correlation between different factors, a WSP(Water Safety Plan) scoring system was
developed in 2009 (Gunnarsd ó ttir et al. 2012 ). The WSP scoring system was
divided into four categories of performance, each with five items, and thus had 20

items in total. In particular, the categories were based on the principles of the well-
known Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle that expresses the continuous improve-
ment process in quality management. The four categories were as follows (Gun-
narsd

ó ttir et al. 2012 ):

Category 1: Assesses the mapping of the hazards (Plan)

￿

Category 2: Assesses what actions were implemented (Do)

￿

Category 3: Assesses the documentation (Check)

￿

Category 4: Assesses the support actions that are used to maintain and improve
the WSP (Act)

￿

The WSP scoring system shows that reevaluation of daily execution and doc-
umentation was needed, especially with regard to audits which are crucial in
maintaining and motivating continuous improvement of the WSP system at each
water utility (Gunnarsd

ttir 2012 ). In the assessment results from 16 water utilities
in Iceland, most water utilities did well in mapping, risk assessment, and perfor-
mance of the required actions to deal with any obstacles. However, there was a lack
of documentation and supportive action such as external and internal audits and
inadequate communication with the public (Gunnarsd

ó

ó

ttir 2012 ). Nevertheless, it
seems clear that the application of the mini HACCP is in general a success story.