The Engineer Who Goes Where Others Don't

During dry season in Tloma Awak, Tanzania, women and children were walking approximately 5 kilometers to find water.

Not to find clean water. Not to find convenient water.

Just to find water.

Maurice Tobon — lead engineer at PhantomH2O — was there. Not as a tourist, not for a conference. He was there as the Responsible Engineer in Charge for the Rutgers University chapter of Engineers Without Borders, working alongside a team of engineering students to solve a water supply problem for somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 people in a rural Tanzanian community.

The work no one photographs

It started with a field assessment. Springs. Boreholes. Distribution infrastructure. Water quality testing. Local operating capacity. The kind of unglamorous, painstaking groundwork that most engineers never do — because most engineers never go.

The long-term plan was a permanent community borehole, roughly 150 meters deep, engineered to produce at least 20,000 liters per hour. But while that planning continued, the community still needed water now.

So in May 2024, the team installed two rainwater-harvesting systems at Kilimani Primary School. Each one with a 5,000-liter storage tank and ceramic water filters. An immediate, locally maintainable source. Something the community could own and operate without outside help.

That's the part that doesn't make the brochures. The part where you design for the people — not just at the problem.

What this has to do with your building

When you work with PhantomH2O, Maurice Tobon is the engineer who reviews your monitoring system before it ever gets installed on your property.

The man who helps solve water access for 1,500 people in rural Tanzania is the same man making sure your building's water profile is read correctly.

That's not a feature. That's a different kind of company.

Most properties we talk to are running blind. Water moving through the building 24 hours a day, bills climbing, no clear signal about where the problem is or how bad it's gotten. A fixture running that shouldn't be. A line that's been leaking behind a wall for two billing cycles. No alert. No flag. Nothing — until the bill arrives.

What the numbers look like

A 161-unit multifamily property we currently monitor is averaging over $3,000 a month in water savings. The monitoring costs considerably less than that. In most cases, the system pays for itself — and then some.

That result doesn't happen by accident. It starts with the kind of engineering review Maurice brings to every deployment: careful, experienced, and grounded in the reality of what water systems actually do when no one is watching.

The Tanzania project is still ongoing

Maurice mentors new generations of Rutgers engineering students through it every year. The borehole planning continues. The rainwater systems are running. And somewhere in between those trips, he's reviewing the next PhantomH2O deployment.

If you want to understand what your building's water exposure actually looks like — and whether PhantomH2O is a fit — the best place to start is a short conversation with our team.

Learn More Here →