Rehabilitation and Completion of Irrigation and Drainage Infrastructure Project, Technical Assistance for PIU – Azerbaijan

Project Name: Rehabilitation and Completion of Irrigation and Drainage Infrastructure Project, Technical Assistance for PIU

Country: AZERBAIJAN

Finance Source: World Bank

Partners: Mott MacDonald Group

Tags: Azerbaijan, World Bank, Irrigation, Technical Assistance

The Project consisted of three components:
1. Rehabilitation and Completion of Irrigation and Drainage Infrastructure a) Rehabilitation of critical main infrastructure of the Samur-Apsheron Canal (SAC) System: The system comprised a headworks across the Samur River, a 182 km long main supply canal, a reservoir near Baku City, pumping stations, three sediment basins and a number of secondary canals that supply water to the irrigation areas covering 86,000 ha. The Proposed project would be limited to rehabilitation of the canal system from km 0 to 50. b) Completion of the construction of 31 km of the Main Mill-Mugan Collector.

2. Institutional Strengthening – there were four sub-components: a) institutional support for SAC management in order to develop an organization that is cost effective and efficient with strong customer orientation; b) preparation of Irrigation sub-sector review; c) training and study tours.

3. Project Implementation Support – the four sub-components were: a) support for the PIU, covering part of incremental staff salaries and operational expenses, equipment and vehicles: b) technical assistance team of international specialists to advise and train the PIU staff; c) annual monitoring and evaluation and environmental monitoring surveys; d) the annual audit of the project accounts.
The main objective of this assignment was to contribute to the implementation of the Rehabilitation and Completion of Irrigation and Drainage Infrastructure Project, mainly consisting of assistance to the PIU with (i) project management, monitoring and evaluation and supervision; (ii) coordination and review of designs and bidding documents for civil works, as well as assistance to the preparation of goods and services to the procurement under the Credit; (iii) assistance with the preparation of detailed terms of references for institutional development activities; (iv) assistance in the setting up of the environmental monitoring unit.