It’s a pilot project of the Human Needs Project, a US NGO, García Castañeda explains. “With the help of multinational Procter & Gamble they’ve built a Town Center in the Kenyan slum of Kibera. The Town Center is a place where people can buy water, take a shower, or use the launderette. If the project turns out to be successful, they want to set up many more similar facilities.”

García Castañeda was asked to estimate the number of people that would use the Town Center, and resulting from that estimate, how many registers, faucets, bathrooms, and washing machines the center needed. The student had the people living close to the center’s location interviewed to determine the general level of interest, timed how long it took people to shower and use the bathroom at similar facilities, and then calculated the best interior design for the Town Center using the queuing theory.

The efforts of the Mexican student have led to actual recommendations, which have been implemented in the Town Center that opened last month: “Upon entering the center, people pay for what they need, ranging from a jerrycan of water to a shower. That’s where the lines start. If they get too long, people will go elsewhere and settle for water that may be contaminated - whereas the Town Center has its own water source and a special water treatment system. The Human Needs Project wanted to install three registers initially, but according to my calculations that would result in extremely long lines. Even with four cash registers there’d be some two hundred people waiting. I’ve recommended five, since that would reduce the lines to a little over twenty people.”

Instead of four cash registers, installing five would prevent many people from leaving the center without being served. So many in fact, that the extra revenue would pay for eight extra employees - an example that aptly illustrates the importance of an accurate visitor estimate. The Town Center now has fifteen taps installed for the estimated ten thousand jerry cans of water that will be purchased every day, where initially they wanted to install eight.

Should the suggestions made by the TU/e student result in a successful Town Center, he will have contributed to making available clean drinking water to more people, reducing cases of infectious diseases and child mortality - the goal of the Human Needs Project. “It’s amazing to have been able to make such a tangible contribution”, says García Castañeda.