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Operations and minor maintenance expenditure is the costs of routine minor maintenance needed to keep water and sanitation systems running at the designed performance. It includes recurrent, regular and on-going expenditure on labour, fuel, chemicals, materials, or purchases of bulk water. Operational expenditure also includes ‘household coping costs’ by which households spend money to achieve a satisfactory level of service; i.e. cleaning products for sanitary facilities, energy costs, etc.
Operations and minor maintenance expenditure does not include major repairs or renewals of water or sanitation infrastructure. This is considered expenditure on [[Capital Maintenance (CapManEx)|capital maintenance (CapManEx)]].
==Examples==
'''Benchmarks capital maintenance expenditure''' <br>
Based on research from the [[#WASHCost|WASHCost]] project, the minimum operations and minor maintenance expenditure to provide a basic level of water service with a borehole and handpump (at 2011 prices) range from US$ 0.5 per person to just over US$ 1 per person (see table 1). For all piped schemes, including mechanised boreholes and piped supplies, the costs range from US$ 0.5 to just over US$ 5 per person.
'''Table 1. Cost ranges for operational and minor maintenance expenditure [min-max] in US$ 2011 per person, per year'''
==Links==
<div id="WASHCost">'''WASHCost'''</div>
* WASHCost was a five-year action research programme, running from 2008 to 2012. The WASHCost team gathered information related to the costs of providing water, sanitation, and hygiene services for an entire life-cycle of a service - from implementation all the way to post-construction. The WASHCost programme was led by IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre with several partners to collect data in the rural and peri-urban areas of Burkina Faso, Ghana, India, and Mozambique. For more information see www.washcost.info
* The Costing Sustainable Services online course was developed to assist governments, NGOs, donors and individuals to plan and budget for sustainable and equitable WASH services, using a life-cycle cost approach. The Life-cycle cost approach is a methodology for costing sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene service delivery and comparing the costs to the level of service received by users. For more information see http://www.washcost.info/page/2448
* Triple-S (Sustainable Services at Scale) is a six-year, multi-country learning initiative to improve water supply to the rural poor. It is led by IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre. The initiative is currently operating in Ghana and Uganda. Lessons learned from work in countries feeds up to the international level where Triple-S is promoting a re-appraisal of how development assistance to the rural water supply sector is designed and implemented. For more information see http://www.waterservicesthatlast.org/
