Abstract:

Water desalination plants are essential to provide Bahrain residents with potable water that Ras Abu Jarjur Reverse Osmosis Water Desalination Plant (RAJ) supply Bahrain with. The amount of potable water that it provides is 16.5 million Gallon per Day (MGPD) representing around 10% of the country's water needs. The study aims to examine the applicability of implementing a Balanced Scorecard (BSC) internally in the RAJ plant by considering the maintenance department as the service provider while the operation department as the customer. This is done to improve plant productivity and achieve the desired financial goals. The research follows a mixed-method methodology in which the qualitative data was collected from the literature, plant, and organization reports to formulate the objectives of BSC, Key performance indicators (KPI's), targets, and initiatives under each BSC perspective. In the first stage, the qualitative data was the foundation to build up the questionnaire for the second stage, which is the quantitative stage. The questionnaire aims to measure the extent of agreement of people working in water desalination plants in Bahrain about the earlier objectives developed in the qualitative phase. The total participants in the questionnaire were 77 persons out of 93 engineers and management-level workers in a water desalination plants in Bahrain. The results show a high level of agreement among the participants about the objectives under financial perspective (78.6%), operational perspective (72.8%), maintenance perspective (72.7%), and learning and growth (84.4%). The statistical analysis confirms the existence of the relationships between the various perspectives. The relationship between the learning and the maintenance aspects is positive, very high, and statistically significant (β=+0.906, p<0.0001). Likewise, are the relationships between the maintenance and operational perspectives (β=+0.897, p<0.0001) and the relationship between the operational and the financial perspectives (β=+0.957, p<0.0001). The study revealed that the implementation of the suggested initiatives could reduce the water production cost by 8% from 160 fils to 147.5 fils. The study recommended utilizing the BSC as a strategic management tool in RAJ and other water desalination plants in Bahrain, as well as, to involve the plants’ staff from all levels in BSC formulation and performance measurement to ensure their commitment.