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Welcome to The Executive Exchange, a premier podcast series for on-the-go senior executives. Each episode features short, impactful podcasts where industry leaders share key insights and experiences from the water industry.
[00:00:00] Piers Clark: Welcome to the Exec Exchange, 15-minute podcast in which a leader from the water sector shares a story to inspire, educate and inform other water sector leaders. Today, I'm with Jocot De Dios, the Chief Executive for Manila Water in the Philippines. Jocot, wonderful to have you with me.
[00:00:21] Jocot De Dios: Hello, Piers.
Good to be invited here. Thanks very much.
[00:00:25] Piers Clark: We like to start by going into a little bit of the background of our podcaster. And, um, you have a really interesting background, having been chief executive of some organizations outside of the water sector. Can you tell me a little bit about that and what you learned from those experiences?
[00:00:43] Jocot De Dios: Well, this is my third year in Manila Water; the water sector. Prior to that, I was one year running a construction company. That's four years for the Enrique Razon Group, which is one of the largest conglomerates in the Philippines. Prior to that, I spent about eight years running the, I was country manager, chief executive officer for General Electric.
In the Philippines, there are several PNLs that I shepherded with multiple customers across the sector. I was also a managing director for government affairs for Asia Pacific for GE. It taught me all the things you needed to do and all the things you didn't need to do in a big multinational context.
I was asked to join GE from Perth, W A, where I was running a oil and gas company, exploration company, small listed Australian company- Nido Petroleum. I did that for four years in Australia, but prior to that, about three years in the Philippines. And prior to that, I was in government.
I was an undersecretary or deputy minister for energy. So, I was preparing the Philippine energy plan. I was supervising the downstream oil sector, and I created the natural gas office for the agency. There was a gap year. I was nominated by the president then to be chairman of the Philippine National Corporation Exploration Corp.
So, and that was it. Prior to government, I was practicing law, commercial law.
[00:02:11] Piers Clark: Well, so you're a lawyer by training. You've been in the government. You've held some pretty senior posts in some big multinationals. And I think this feeds into the story we're going to be touching on which is around how you can take Manila Water into a truly global Philippine water utility. Let's talk about Manila Water now. So, Manila Water, how many people does it serve? Where is it based? What sort of services does...
[00:02:37] Jocot De Dios: We're based in Manila. Our main, our core business is servicing 7. 6 million customers in the eastern area or section of Metro Manila plus the Rizal province on the east.
And so this is a very successful public private partnership, 27 years. And, and that's pretty much about 80% of our top line. We are outside of Metro Manila across the, what we call our non-East zone Philippines. So we're an area south of Metro Manila in Laguna north of Metro Manila in Clark, in Pampanga, further south where we service Al Baraka water, further even down South Taum in, in Davo.
So, we do have a very wide footprint in the Philippines and we do have international investments in Vietnam to Duke and Dong Saigon water, we have a small investment in, uh, the listed company in Thailand- Eastwater- we have a small operation in Indonesia, and we do have a couple of management operations, maintenance contracts in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the East and the Northwest cluster.
So, it's, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work, a lot of, a lot of coverage.
[00:03:47] Piers Clark: A lot of coverage, a lot of geography, and a lot of time zones that you're, you're then spreading yourself across. But we're going to talk a bit more about that and your ambitions to, to grow even more globally. But before we go there, there's recently been some terrible typhoons.
I think there were two very close to each other that, that hit the Philippines. And I'm sure this added extra stress and strain to the day-to-day operations of what you did in Manila Water. Can you tell me a bit about that experience?
[00:04:16] Jocot De Dios: Yeah, you know, the typhoons like what we've experienced in the last couple of months can be a double-edged sword because on the one hand, it wreaks a lot of havoc towards our fellow Filipinos and our operations.
On the other, it provides as much needed water in the dams that provide us water, at least for the zone concession. Fortunately for us, the last couple of storms didn't necessarily hit directly Metro Manila, but we did benefit from water being added to the dams. But that meant outside of Metro Manila, we needed to prepare very, very carefully to anticipate disruptions in our operations.
And that we did. We're part of this system, the Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation. Which I'm a director, and we pay attention to weather disturbances, seismic activities, anything that we anticipate could happen. And so our role here is quite apart from being the water utility that ensures that no matter what happens, no matter the severity of any storm that hits the country, whether in Metro Manila or outside, we are best prepared to deal with contingencies.
Whether you're talking about gensets ready or manpower, we have a very, very robust response system. And, apart from that, we provide aid. We had to send several tanker trucks to the south of Metro Manila to help a lot of our fellow Filipinos who are in distress. But that's really on the reaction to the storms and support very much needed relief operations.
I think where we as a utility can be of significant value is trying to understand the role that we have in ensuring that for oncoming disasters in the next few years, what can we do to harness it in a positive way? So, we had a meeting, the president has a private sector advisory councils across the different sectors and we were part of the sector that dealt with flooding due to storms. And we provided some solutions because knowing the water network, at least in the East Zone and being familiar with the West Zone and their counterparts there, we could offer very positive, powerful solutions to not only deal with flooding, but to possibly harness the water that is generated. So that's an ongoing process that we find ourselves in...
[00:06:56] Piers Clark: And what sort of solutions would those be?
[00:06:58] Jocot De Dios: The issue is to be able to collect the volume of water when you have floods rather than it float all the way to Manila Bay. There are, let's say, initiatives now to build retention reservoirs downstream of certain, let's say, impounding areas like dams.
And I said to the team, I said to the president also that, "maybe we can, we can think of harnessing that rather than just use it as purely as a flood mitigation infrastructure." That's one. We've even taken a look at what other countries do, let's say in Malaysia, obviously Singapore has Marina Bay, where you sort of use it because they reuse their water. Others is really just building diversion channels into Manila Bay.
[00:07:43] Piers Clark: So, it's all about holding the water, managing the water as it's coming. These typhoons are coming more regularly, they're more intense. Finding a way of changing our infrastructure and our catchment management so that we hold the water back for as long as possible and can then use it.
Brilliant. Thank you for that. It's encouraging to hear that there's been so much thought and preparation so that you're ready for these disasters when they strike. To make Manila water a truly global Filipino water utility; how are you going to deliver that? What's the scale of your ambition?
[00:08:18] Jocot De Dios: It's free to dream, as they say. Ambition and dreams know no limits. I guess what grounds us is the ability, our ability to do valuable work in the places that we wanna work in. So, our first principles is to make sure we deliver the service that will keep us best in class and that's water supply and wastewater treatment and keeping our NRW at below 14 or about 13. 5 percent NRW in the East zone. And rather than say, "Oh, we're going to go to this country because we want to be a global utility." I'd rather want to reframe it to say we're doing best practices. We're doing the best we can. We can stand toe to toe with any global utility or operator anywhere in the world.
And if there's a major partner or major opportunity that allows us to deploy that in a way that we can truly add value, then we will. So, I guess it's a very long-winded way of saying, "we're not just going to go anywhere the wind blows or the water flows, but it has to be a value to our potential partner, the potential customer baser, and obviously to us.
So, we have these international investments. We've been scanning the horizon for a bit, uh, the last 24 months. Uh, and we have certain metrics to pay attention to. But, to keep us on our toes, we really try to make sure we provide world class services to our local constituents here.
[00:09:52] Piers Clark: If I just play that back to you, it's about being best in class at the particular things that the particular challenges that Metro Manila is dealing with and then exporting those into other territories where that will also create a unique position for you. And to be able to deliver best value services to those customers.
[00:10:10] Jocot De Dios: That's exactly right. We are a pure play utility. We're not an EPC, although we have an EPC entity. What we do best is deliver water, deliver wastewater service. So, I introduced as well as we want to be more innovative. So, we've generated a couple of patent applications just so that we know that you have the youngsters who can innovate solutions or methods or protocols that will allow us to export these so-called methods and protocols outside. So that's part of the plan we're rolling out.
[00:10:42] Piers Clark: Excellent. Now, we normally ask at this stage, what advice would you give your younger self? I'm tempted to ask, what advice would you give yourself going back just four years ago?
Would you have said, yes, I still want to join Manila Water? Or maybe I should broaden the question and say, what is the best advice you've ever been given?
[00:11:02] Jocot De Dios: Let me say first what advice I'd give myself at the start of my four years in Manila Water. I should have done things much earlier. Don't waste time. Move on with change very quickly. Remember, this is a change, a transformation, right? And so we have to, there's a cultural shift in the way we do things, just because it's a new management. I could have done with less steps. And I guess to me, 25 years back, same thing. If you pay attention to my career, it's been in tranches of seven or eight years that I change, I shift or I pivot.
[00:11:43] Piers Clark: You have a seven-year itch?
[00:11:45] Jocot De Dios: There you go. So maybe make it like a six-year itch. I do enjoy my days in Manila Water every day. It keeps me up positively in the sense that there's a lot of good we can still do. I enjoy working with the teams here. I guess in terms of advice, there's a lot, but the one thing that sticks, that comes to mind is " Don't run out of water."
My chairman said, “Don't run out of water."
[00:12:11] Piers Clark: It goes right to the heart of the business, doesn't it? It's good advice. Thank you very much Jocot. It's been wonderful speaking to you. You have been listening to the Exec Exchange with Piers Clark and today I've been talking to Jocot De Dios, the chief executive of Manila Water. Thank you for listening. Please join us next time. Goodbye.