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Lesson
Active engagement with key government agencies is important. It can provide the much-needed oversight and intervention to facilitate the resolution of unexpected design and implementation issues emerging from project implementation. These especially concern issues that ADB has very limited control.

Project Number: 42414-033
Project Name: Sustainable Urban Transport Investment Program (Tranche 2)
Report Date:
Lesson
Engaging capable design institutes, backed by sufficient budget and time allocations, will result in better quality technical designs that in turn will facilitate construction progress, reduce the need for contract variations, and optimize construction costs. There were significant variations in some of this project's civil works contracts. These variations resulted mainly from poor quality of technical designs, with errors and omissions in the construction drawings.

Project Number: 45507-003
Project Name: Yunnan Chuxiong Urban Environment Improvement Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Gender trainings are a must in ADB first-time projects. This was the first project funded by ADB in Chuxiong prefecture. As such, trainings on Gender equality and the project's Gender action (GAP) plan were needed to promote Gender awareness, develop understanding, and build capacities for GAP implementation. The trainings and overall design of GAP proved relevant and contributed to achieving overall project objectives.

Project Number: 45507-003
Project Name: Yunnan Chuxiong Urban Environment Improvement Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Reducing or avoiding implementation delays would require, among others: (i) ensuring that project and/or subproject implementation is a high priority for local governments and counterpart funds are provided in government annual budgets, and (ii) starting resettlement activities as early as possible and providing adequate funds for these activities.

Project Number: 45507-003
Project Name: Yunnan Chuxiong Urban Environment Improvement Project
Report Date:
Lesson
During the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual mission and online meetings were conducted to ensure continued ADB technical support and monitoring of project implementation, which could be widely applied in the future, especially during periods of travel restriction.

Project Number: 44019-013
Project Name: Hubei Huangshi Urban Pollution Control and Environmental Management Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Close monitoring of and prompt responses to policy changes ensure smooth implementation and compliance to covenants. During project implementation, the executing agency took prompt action to change the scope of the project when one of the original subcomponents was not in compliance with the new issued development plan. This enabled the project to avoid compliance issues and be carried out smoothly.

Project Number: 44019-013
Project Name: Hubei Huangshi Urban Pollution Control and Environmental Management Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Signing of loan agreement is essential to achieving project readiness. To avoid possible risk, the executing agency did not start the project implementation, including the detailed design for civil works, until the loan agreement was signed on 6 February 2013. That slowed project implementation progress in the early stage. In the future, ADB needs to convince the counterpart to enhance project readiness.

Project Number: 44019-013
Project Name: Hubei Huangshi Urban Pollution Control and Environmental Management Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Incorporating utility shifting as part of the item-rate contract has proven effective for timely project completion in some Indian states. Utility shifting is usually contracted out to a third-party entity specialized in utility shifting. Contractors often abuse this arrangement, however, taking it as an excuse to delay civil works. To prevent this, the utility shifting should be included as an item in the bill of quantity to be carried out directly by the contractor.

Project Number: 41629-013, 44425-013
Project Name: Bihar State Highways II Project 
Report Date:
Lesson
As larger contracts experienced more delays compared to shorter contracts, in future projects, shorter-length contracts may be considered. The termination of contractors was observed to be due to their non-proactive approach while working in discontinuous encumbrance-free stretches of road, poor planning, and inadequate financial capability. Instead of terminating contracts, it would be more desirable to make encumbrance-free land available upfront, release retention money, and create escrow accounts—which were approaches that were successfully implemented.

Project Number: 41629-013, 44425-013
Project Name: Bihar State Highways II Project 
Report Date:
Lesson
High staff turnover, weak procurement and contract management capacities, and lack of familiarity with ADB procedures, often the cause of implementation delays, need to be addressed jointly by ADB and government counterpart agencies. Because of the changes in the executing agency’s senior-level officials, turnover of the project staff was high. The project also suffered from counterpart agencies' weak procurement and contract management capacity and lack of familiarity with ADB guidelines.

Project Number: 43007-023
Project Name: Higher Education Reform Project
Report Date:
Lesson
The objectives and implementation period for sector reform projects need to be well-aligned with the government’s long-term vision and carefully consider existing capacities. This project's overall objective was ambitious as sector reforms require long-term and sustainable interventions, adequate resources, and sufficient time. Increasing student enrollment and rural higher education institutions offering distance education programs were not achievable through a single project intervention.

Project Number: 43007-023
Project Name: Higher Education Reform Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Changes in scope and implementation arrangements are often needed to make projects responsive to changes in government and policy directions. The changes in the ruling party and restructuring of the government in 2012 and 2016 led to changes in the policy directions on higher education. To remain responsive and aligned with the government’s policy, minor changes were made to the project scope and implementation arrangements.

Project Number: 43007-023
Project Name: Higher Education Reform Project
Report Date:
Lesson
The COVID-19 pandemic had certain impacts on Dongxing border port trading due to reduced traffic flow on the Fengcheng–Jiangshan road connecting to the port in 2021.

Project Number: 43023-013
Project Name: Guangxi Beibu Gulf Cities Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Closer communication and coordination between ADB and the implementing agencies (IAs) are necessary to ensure timely loan closing. The loan closing took about 21 months. One of the major reasons was that some of the withdrawal application papers submitted by the IAs were incomplete or inconsistent and clarifications or corrections of these took a long time. ADB’s review and clearance on these clarifications was also slow in several cases.

Project Number: 43023-013
Project Name: Guangxi Beibu Gulf Cities Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Scope changes can lead to extended implementation delays, especially when review and due diligence on these changes are not organized properly. The project experienced significant implementation delays due to factors which were unforeseen at approval. These changes resulted in reallocation ofthe loan proceeds. The review process including due diligence for these changes took 1 year on average. In fact, the process could have been shortened had the organization of these changes been orderly.

Project Number: 43023-013
Project Name: Guangxi Beibu Gulf Cities Development Project
Report Date: