KUALA LUMPUR, 9 December 2016 - The project carried out by the Universiti Sains Malaysia team (USM) from the School of Civil Engineering (PPKA) together with the Selama Land and District Office in Perak received recognition by winning the National Blue Ocean Strategy (NBOS) Competition, under the Civil Service category today and took home the prize money of RM30,000.

The prizes were given away by the Treasury Secretary-General, Ministry of Finance Malaysia Tan Sri Dr. Mohd Irwan Serigar Abdullah in a ceremony here today.

The 'Pilot Project: Water For Life' which was implemented in Kampung Air Sungai Simpul, Sungai Jernih, Selama, Perak was led by Izziantee binti Izzahan from the Selama District Office in cooperation with several agencies such as the Perak Health Department, Fire and Rescue Team, Civil Defence Department, the Police Department and the Taiping Royal Engineers Regiment.

The project was aimed at providing clean water supply to the B40 community in 48 houses with 202 occupants at the cost of RM130,000, and which took only 23 days to complete.

Said the PPKA Dean who is also the USM Engineering Campus Director, Professor Dr. Ahmad Farhan Mohd Sadullah, this recognition reflected the success in combining the expertise available at the university with the government agencies, assisting them to provide to those in need as part of the knowledge expansion exercise to benefit the community.

"This water supply project which utilised the technology and expertise available at USM has certainly brought an impact to those in need of clean water supply," he said when congratulating and thanking the team members comprising of Professor Ir Dr. Mohd Nordin Adlan and Professor Dr. Hamidi Abdul Aziz and also those from PPKA along with others in this smart partnership.

USM provided its expertise in the form of the 'horizontal roughing filter', developed through research and which is awaiting confirmation of being patented.

The 'Water For Life' Pilot Project was officiated by the Minister of Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism, Dato' Seri Hj Hamzah Zainuddin earlier.

This competition was aimed at sourcing for creative and innovative Blue Ocean ideas for the three categories namely the Civil Service, Social Entrepreneurship and Commercial Entrepreneurship.

For the Civil Service category, it is about the best ideas to be delivered by the civil service that could bring a positive impact to the lives of the people, and the creative and innovative ideas would be in five areas which are delivery of government service, housing and local government service, price monitoring of goods and services, natural resources and the environment, and education and learning.

The Civil Service category had received very good response with more than 600 entries.

This programme was organised by NBOS, MoF, National Strategy Unit (NSU) and National Entrepreneurship Development Office, and with the cooperation of JPA, AIM, iM4U and MAGIC.

The National Blue Ocean Strategy (NBOS) was conceived based on the principles of the Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS) created by Professor W. Chan Kim and Professor Renee Mauborgne. It provides a creative and systematic approach in high-value production at low costs.

Translation: Mazlan Hanafi Basharudin