"Sino French Water is a company created in 1992 between Suez Environnement of France and NWS Holdings Limited of Hong Kong. Sino French Water invests and establishes joint-ventures (JVs) with local water authorities and companies in China to improve the management and operation of water, waste water, industrial water services and sludge treatment. Today there are more than 25 JVs spread all over China and each one with unique characteristics.

All water systems leak, and many supply systems do so considerably, with water losses typically of approximately 20% of the water production. The IWA Water Loss Task Force aims for a significant reduction of annual water losses by drafting documents to assist practitioners and others to prevent, monitor and mitigate water losses in water transmission and distribution systems. One of the causes of water losses are transient phenomena, caused by normal and accidental pump and valve operations.

"General anomalies that occur in the management of apparent losses are identified and include determination of apparent loss indicators that fail to take into account both the random and bias errors inherent in metering. Estimating the volume of water losses that could be attributed to meter errors is also incorrectly assumed to be equivalent to the error limits (i.e. envelope) stipulated in standards. Performance indicators that are reliant on flow meter data must be expressed as a range and not as a single value which is common practice.

The world’s population is increasing at a tremendous rate, the world’s renewable water resources are reducing rapidly, the gap between supply and demand is widening with urbanisation and climate change making it even wider. This paper reviews how the Water Board of Lemesos, Cyprus, a water utility with a proven history of managing extremely well its distribution network, was forced due to water shortage conditions to have intermittent supply, providing water 3 times a week for about 12 hours each time.