Creating sustainability awareness must be a major goal in Higher Education and Engineering studies. The Msc students of the Faculty of Engineering (Bilbao, Spain) in the last year of their studies, have the opportunity to select a block of subjects intended to enhance their knowledge on Fluid Mechanics.
One of the subjects in this stream is called “Management and Maintenance of Hydraulic Systems” and is devoted to different aspects of water cycle management. In this subject, state-of-the-art operation and management techniques are taught to the students. The focus is practical and is based on hands-on computer real-life exercises, which involves not only intensive programming using a high-level software, but also the spatial representation of results.
R (https://www.cran.r-project.org/) is a freely available software that provides an optimum answer to these combined needs and challenges due to its modular structure. R has a core module, and nearly 8000 packages specifically developed for different purposes are also available. Some packages have been developed to make R work with full functionalities just like any GIS software, while exhibiting all the capabilities of any high-level programming software.
R has been adopted and is increasing its penetration in the field of water management. Incorporating R into the teaching activities of the subject has represented an important step forward in the education of future engineers while providing them with real-life tools used in water management.
Apart from that, there are cooperation programs with local institutions and the students of the Grade in Renewable Energy Engineering at the faculty of Eibar along with Bilbao’ Faculty of Engineering can attend specific technical visits to the facilities of these institutions.
These visits focus both on the joint use of water for population supply and also hydraulic renewable energy. The technical staff provide students with information that complements the flux of information that students receive during the joint activities.

Keywords: Technical visit, water supply, hydraulic turbines, Bilbao, Eibar, Spain.