By Nikola Marinko · Contractor's Representative Project Manager, WSS Bulancak, Türkiye, 2016-2017 · Updated October 2026 · 9 min read

From June 2016 to January 2017 I was Contractor's Representative Project Manager on WSS Bulancak, a €9.8M EU IPA-financed water supply system under FIDIC Yellow Book conditions. I came in mid-execution as a replacement, with pipes already in the ground and the clock running, to finish, commission and hand over 7 wells, 10 reservoirs, 5 pumping stations and more than 125 km of network for 45,000 people. Seven months of that, and Bulancak stopped being a posting and became somewhere I knew.

The story is the town between shifts. A five-room flat in Piraziz with the Black Sea filling the windows and cornbread from the bakery downstairs, the Ordu-Giresun Airport runway built out into the sea, a farmer called Cemal and his honey from the Incuvez Spring, and a 3 a.m. race to a failing reservoir. Tea houses and backgammon, the Hamsi Festival, a Genoese watchtower above a pebble cove, Giresun and its castle to the west, and Ordu to the east, where we drove on Fridays because Bulancak keeps its restaurants dry.

Bulancak is the quiet one between two livelier cities, and that is its charm. Come for the anchovies and the tea, and stay for the people who share them.

WSS Bulancak project · Escape to Batumi · Istanbul · Batumi · Field stories

Bulancak, Türkiye - Seven Months Finishing a Black Sea Water Supply

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