Miljøprojekt, 989 – HACCP - et værktøj til risikostyring i vandforsyningen

HACCP - a Risk Management Tool for Water Suppliers

Summary and conclusions

This project is the first step in developing a guideline for the use of HACCP in the Danish water supply sector. The specific purpose of the project is to build up knowledge in the participating water suppliers and from this process learn more about implementing HACCP in Denmark.

During seven month in the year 2004 the project "HACCP i vandforsyningerne" (HACCP for the water suppliers) has concretised and evaluated the use of proactive risk control. Based on an approved risk assessment and risk control methodology from the food industry (HACCP) and the recommendations from WHO on how to use HACCP for water supply, the methodology is evaluated towards the use in Danish water supply.

Basically HACCP is a methodology that ensures that the work with risk control is based on common sense and an active control with the most important processes. The key issue is to control the level of risk to an acceptable level for drinking water and avoid event driven emergency situations.

The HACCP methodology is in short an iterative two step process:

Conduct the hazard analysis - what goes wrong and identify the need for surveillance
Introduce the surveillance and describe which actions that will be taken in the case of off-limit values

The work with HACCP for Danish water supply has resulted in the following conclusions:

The HACCP methodology ensures a correct priority of the risks and will following lead to a correct resource allocation. The project has tailored a specific methodology for comparison of risk based on Danish conditions and experiences.
Personal attitude toward risk management has played a major part in the project. Focusing more on control instead of test will ensure that the delivered water will meet the water quality targets.
Sharing knowledge between the water suppliers will minimise the occurrence of the same error.
HACCP is a good supplement to existing management systems.
HACCP facilitates a discussion on which level of risk Danish water supply shall be based.
To help the individual water suppliers and responsible persons in making specific decisions that involve risk assessment or management, a common baseline for acceptable level of risk in water supply is needed.

The participating water suppliers believe that HACCP is a useful tool that will clarify and optimise the work with risk and thereby help increasing the drinking water safety in Denmark.