Upper Secondary Education Development Project

Positive outcomes in terms of cost and quality were associated with using market prices in cost estimates for civil works and involving local communities in the management of works. This fact was appreciated by the government, which valued ADB's flexibility in this aspect of the project's operation. Escalation of civil works costs has been a major delaying factor in numerous ADB-funded projects in Viet Nam. In this project, however, Ministry of Education and Training and ADB had agreed from the start to use market prices in the cost estimates for construction contracts, so the national project implementation unit never encountered any unexpected overrun in civil works costs.