Rehabilitation of big infrastructure projects is easier said than done

ADB
Sohail Hasnie

One of the turbines at Togtokul.

Replacing old components with new ones is easy. Changing a light bulb is simple, and changing a car tire hard work but pretty straightforward; changing a car engine needs skilled technicians and equipment, but it’s still far from difficult and there are plenty of people with the experience and necessary skills.

It gets much harder, though, to replace old parts in a big infrastructure project, like we recently learned in the Kyrgyz Republic, where we wanted to change the four 300-megawatt units of the Toktogul hydropower plant – a gigantic, expensive, complicated technical task and logistical nightmare under a $400 million project jointly financed by ADB and the Eurasia Development Bank.

The plant’s heaviest components—the turbine and the generators—weigh about 400 tons each – that’s the equivalent of 16 fully loaded 40-ft containers that can only carry about 25 tons, or the weight of 100 trucks or about 200 SUVs.

The Kyrgyz Republic is a landlocked country, which means the heavy equipment have to be moved on wheels or rails over very long distances from neighboring countries, and bear in mind the potential traffic congestion created by cargo moving at just 10 km/h.

Air transport was not an option, since the maximum capacity of the Ukrainian super carrier 737 Antonov Mira—that can carry a Boeing 737—is only about 250 metric tons.

There are other challenges. Since Toktogul produces about 30% of the country’s electricity, it can’t stop running completely – while one unit is being replaced the others have to continue operating. In winter the whole area is covered in snow, so specific turbine replacement work only be done for 3 months each year. The cold and remoteness makes it difficult to find expat project managers and engineers who will commit to the task and be willing to stay at the site (5 hours away from capital city Bishkek) for 4 years. Finally, a handful of companies in the world can actually do the job.

After the project’s pre-bid meeting in October, we realized rehabilitation is lot more difficult than building new.

Our conclusion is that once it is completed, the project will change the lives of many people in the Kyrgyz Republic over the next 4 years, but for us it has all the attributes to become a continuous nightmare. Did anyone say development work was easy?