How to Develop a Conceptual Framework for Sanitation

Sanitation is one of the most important tasks that governments do for their citizens. Without proper sanitation, disease can spread rapidly through heavily populated areas. However, devising a sound sanitation plan requires thorough planning and coordination. Fortunately, there are steps individuals can take to help ensure that their sanitation framework can adequately accommodate the community's needs.

1. Establish the goals of the sanitation program. In particular, the goals should address what services the sanitation program will provide and the geographic reach of the program. For example, if the sanitation plan calls for garbage disposal, then it must specify what areas will be included in the service and how much outlying areas must pay for this service. This is the most important part of the conceptual design process because it will provide officials with a series of detailed objectives to achieve.


2. Identify potential problems. As with any plan, there are a variety of problems that can develop. If these problems are not accounted for in the initial design, then the entire process can quickly lose focus and become ineffective. Therefore, it is important for planners to address as many potential problems as they can during the initial designing of the sanitation framework. In particular, the planners should anticipate problems that are related to budgetary constraints and geographic limitations. For example, if a large part of the community resides on a large mountain, then the planners must identify potential problems that can arise during the construction of underground infrastructure to these areas.


3. Describe potential solutions for the potential problems that have been identified. When addressing possible solutions in the framework document, it is important to identify numerous potential solutions for each problem that has been identified. By identifying numerous solutions, it is more likely that future officials will be able to incorporate elements of these solutions into problems that have developed. In other words, due to the long time frame that infrastructure projects takes to complete, it is important to provide guidelines for solving problems to future elected officials who were not a part of the original framework design team.


4. Compose a document that clearly presents these findings. When composing the document, it is important to present in a way that will allow officials to clearly understand the plan that they are considering. To accomplish this task, numerous flow charts and maps should be incorporated into the final document. These maps should show the areas that the plan will cover. Also, flow charts should detail how the process of implementing the conceptual framework should unfold.