The Water Framework Directive (WFD) provides a set of actions to ensure water quality and to promote a responsible use to guarantee the resource is available. For these purposes, at Canal de Isabel II we have a management model based on exhaustive control through measuring the volumes that are admitted and extracted from the distribution networks, in any of the phases of the integrated water cycle.

The only instruments capable of verifying this crucial control work, as an essential premise for proper management, are water meters. These devices allow us to know our individualised consumption and, thus, to control it by means of appropriate saving measures. Moreover, water meters have another important function, which is none other than detecting leaks or water breakdowns (imperceptible to the naked eye) in our facility’s pipes. 

Keeping the water meter in perfect condition is vitally important. To do so, at Canal we have a team of 35 professionals whose work is based on inspecting the condition of these facilities. They do so by installing and inspecting the counters on-site, and the facility as a whole. Each year, they make approximately 30,000 visits; about 150 each day.

This task, which has earned the ENAC certification, comprises various functions:

• Making the pre-contract inspection of the supply in order to amend or confirm the layout of the water facility.
• Verifying the functioning of the estate’s meters.
• Modifying the facilities: recesses, extensions and meter reductions.
• Controlling the connections made without the mandatory supply contract, monitoring frauds.
• Examining and verifying the data related to all the elements of the connection on an estate or in the set of estates in a gated community, to update the total number of subscribers.
• Checking the water facilities after a complaint, and inspecting, in turn, boards, connections, meters, etc.

In short, the Inspection Area works to promote best practices in the measurement instrument installation, monitoring and verification processes. It is they who visit the clients to make these inspections and who, therefore, serve as a liaison between the company and the Madrid public. Javier Martínez has belonged to this group of estate inspectors for 14 years; in the following video, he explains from first-hand experience what the important task we have talked to you about in this post is like.