Bika CEO and manager on the project, lemoene Smit, remarked that "Open Source systems attract dedicated and visionary clients. We believe we have found in the City of uMhlathuze real partners to further the development of Bika Water for the benefit of all resource poor municipal water laboratories"

GijimaAST, City of uMhlathuze's ICT strategic partner, are key local facilitators and handle 1st line technical support. Although taking the Open Source route under government directive, GijimaAST has been actively promoting Open  Source. They also feature Asset Maintenance, Performance Management and on-line Streetlight complaints, Services Application System (SAS) and other Municipal related OS systems in their portfolio

Bika Water represents a significant departure from the generic Bika LIMS and many of the features will be re-integrated in other Bika branches - notably sampling instructions, partitioning and preservation depending on the analyses ordered. Initially it appeared trivial but required new roles, workflow statuses, worksheet functionality, sample points and so forth. More design information, and downloads, on the Bika Water project page soon

With fuller automation in mind, an obvious future addition to Bika Water would be the implementation of sampling schedules - many of the samples in this discipline are obtained periodically at the same sample point. Once scheduled, the system will automate creation of sample and analysis requests, and email the assigned sampler his instructions and schedule. Other upcoming enhancements will include calculated analyses and water laboratory specific instrument interfaces

To quote Lab manager Neeran Maharaj, "We are in the fortunate position of having been able to actively participate in this development project and one of our primary goals is to see it implemented in many more Municipal labs, thus contributing to water quality management, an all too frequent news item given the effects of the rapid urbanization we are experiencing in South Africa”

“Because of the very definition of Open Source software, we were able to have the system specifically tailored to our exact requirements and we'll continue to enhance and modify it as our needs evolve without vendor lock-in or rigid upgrade cycles”

“We are engaged in the ISO 17025 accreditation process at present and Bika Water will accelerate our qualification. We are considering sponsoring the development of an integrated accreditation module to automate procedures originating from the Quality Management functionality inherent to Bika Water"

GijimaAST project manager Arnold Allen remarked that "Bika Lab Systems' project team members are not only passionate Open Source enthusiasts, but highly skilled and professional, with the ability to contribute towards the improvement of service delivery to residents. Bika Water is slick, easy to use and will no doubt improve the lab's turnaround and accuracy further"

Fanele Dlamini, lab supervisor and LIMS manager, added: “We are impressed by the quality, user friendliness and intuitive web interface of the software as well as the user support provided. Bika Water considerably reduces our workload whilst improving our accuracy now that it has automated so many of our lab's formerly manual processes”

Nombuso Cebekhulu, Neeran Maharaj (lab manager), Nokukhanya Khuzwayo,
Grace Dlamini, lemoene Smit (Bika) and Fanele Dlamini (lab supervisor)

The Bika  team extends their  heart felt thanks to all project participants for their contributions and partnership without which this great application would not have been possible