Clean water for Vietnam 

The population of two poor provinces in northern Vietnam is to have clean water, sanitation, and improved health and hygiene. These are just some of the goals of a major water project to be implemented next year with a loan of USD 100 million from the World Bank.

But first a so-called Project Implementation Plan (PIP) – a detailed plan for implementation of the project - must be drawn up, and for this the Vietnamese sector ministry has hired a leading local consultancy firm, VIWASE Consultants.
The project aims at improving sanitation in villages in the north of Vietnam.

The consultant’s consultant

For the Vietnamese consultants, however, this is a new type of assignment. Therefore COWI is providing assistance in drawing up the PIP – an assignment that will take the whole of this year and involve 7-8 COWI experts within different fields.

COWI market area manager Vagn Rehøj explains: "This is the kind of role we will be taking on more frequently in the future. Increasingly, donors and collaborating countries want to put projects the way of local or regional consultants, but often they have only limited experience of project preparation and implementation requirements. Consequently our job will be largely one of building up local competence."

Social and environmental demands

The PIP will include a strategy to ensure that social and ethnic minorities are taken into consideration, that the various components of the project are environmentally sustainable, and that financial management procedures meet the World Bank’s safeguard policies.

These safeguard policies concern the consequences of projects financed by the World Bank and are in place to ensure that there are no negative environmental, social, cultural or financial consequences.

"Think of it as an expanded form of quality assurance,” comments Vagn Rehøj. “If the PIP - and hence the project preparations - are not good enough, the loan will simply not be granted."

By: Janne Toft Jensen, jaje@cowi.com  
Published: 24.03.2004