Drinkwell Skilling Academy
Training on live plants for young operators, maintenance technicians, water engineers and water-quality analysts. Learn online, practise on a working treatment plant, and earn a certificate employers can check.
Why an academy
They fail because nobody was trained, paid or held to keep them running. The sector builds a plant, walks away, and builds another one. Every treatment plant needs a person who opens it in the morning, an engineer who knows when the media is close to exhaustion, and a chemist who can prove the water is safe. We are training all three.
Treatment plants get built with capital budgets, often well.
Operation and maintenance get no budget and no trained hands.
The plant stops, people go back to the unsafe well, and the cycle restarts.
Four tracks, one ladder
Start where you are. A school leaver can begin as an operator and climb to technician; an engineer or a chemist can enter at the top. Each level is a certificate a Drinkwell partner can hire against.
Level 1 · Operate
For young people, 18 and over, who have finished secondary school.
Level 2 · Maintain
For ITI, diploma and polytechnic graduates, and working plumbers and electricians.
Level 3 · Engineer
For civil, chemical and environmental engineers, in departments, consultancies and contractors.
Advanced · Analyse
For chemistry and environmental science graduates and lab staff.
How it works
Theory is free and online, so it reaches every district. Skill is proven by hand, on working equipment, because water you cannot see is easy to get wrong.
Short online modules with quizzes, in Bangla, Hindi or English, on a phone.
Hands-on weeks at a host college, a Drinkwell plant or a plant run by a certified partner.
A practical exam at a regeneration hub or lab, marked by a qualified examiner.
Your certificate goes on a public register that certified partners hire from.
Certificates are renewed every year with a short refresher and a check of real work logged on real sites. A certificate says what you can do this year, not what you once passed.
The lab
Arsenic is tasteless, odourless and dangerous at levels a field kit can miss. The analyst track trains chemists to measure what matters, to know when a field result can be trusted, and to defend a number in front of a regulator.
The WHO guideline for arsenic in drinking water: ten parts per billion, about one drop in a hundred thousand litres. Proving water is under it is a skill, and the skill is scarce.
Certificates you can check
Every certificate has a public record. A department, a contractor or a partner can look it up before they hire, and see the level, the date and whether it is current.
Partner with us
We supply the curriculum, the assessments and the training for instructors. Partners supply the classrooms, the plants and the people.
Colleges and institutes
ITIs, polytechnics, engineering colleges and technical training centres teach Levels 1 and 2 with our material, at no cost for the curriculum. We train your instructors and examiners.
Become a hostEmployers
Contractors, operators and departments hire from the certificate register, and send their own staff through the tracks.
Hire or train staffFunders
CSR and skilling funds sponsor a cohort in a district, and see every learner's progress, exam and placement.
Sponsor a cohortQuestions
The online theory is free. The hands-on weeks and the practical exam carry a fee, which a sponsor or employer often pays. Fees are set when each cohort opens.
The first cohorts are planned for West Bengal and Bangladesh, near our plants and regeneration hubs. Online modules work anywhere.
Not for Level 1. Level 2 suits ITI and diploma holders. Level 3 is for engineers, and the analyst track is for chemistry graduates.
We cannot promise one. Your certificate goes on a register that our certified partners hire from, and partners need certified staff to hold their tier.
No. Operating a plant safely, testing water and running a lab are skills that apply to any treatment system. The tracks use our plants because they are the ones we can open to learners.
It has moved to learn.drinkwell.com/water.
First cohorts