| Project Detail |
Project Development Objective
PDO Statement
31. The objectives of the project are to improve access to water supply and sanitation services and
improve the quality and efficiency of water supply and sanitation service delivery in select peri-urban and
rural areas of Jingyang District of Deyang City in Sichuan Province.
PDO Level Indicators24
32. The following five Project Development Objective (PDO) level results indicators reflect the specific
outcomes that the project is aiming to achieve:
(a) Number of people benefiting from improved water supply services
(b) Number of people benefiting from safely managed sanitation services25, 26
(c) Percentage of customers satisfied with the services provided by the Project Company25
(d) Reduction in Non-Revenue Water Rate (NRW) (percentage of NRW in total water produced)
(e) Cost recovery in water supply services
C. Project Components
33. The project has two components:
Component 1: Institutional Strengthening and Infrastructure Investments to Improve WSS Services in
Jingyang District (Estimated cost: US$153.4 million; IBRD loan: US$99 million) (Water: 34 percent,
wastewater: 66 percent)
34. This component has three key activity areas:
(a) Establishment of a modern, integrated WSS utility. The project will support the establishment
of the WSS utility and systems to enable efficient WSS service delivery. Establishing the utility
includes preparing and executing the PPP transaction as well as setting up and developing the
institutional systems (for example, management, personnel, administration, and billing and
accounting). Project support will also include developing an integrated smart water management
platform and installing smart meters to enable the Project Company to monitor, manage, and
operate WSS system assets efficiently. Establishing a financially sustainable, efficiently managed,
and well-maintained WSS utility will lead to a reduction in NRW and more reliable water and
sanitation services with less service interruptions and more consistent water quality. The
investments will enhance water security and reduce the discharge of untreated wastewater into
the tributaries of the Yangtze River (an important source of water), thereby increasing the
reliability and quality of the water and making the residents in the targeted areas more resilient
to climate change-exacerbated water shortages.
(b) Establishment of WSS utility customer service mechanisms. The project will support the WSS
utility to set up and conduct ongoing citizen engagement activities, including a community-based
customer satisfaction survey, community meetings on WSS service quality, and WASH BCCs. The
project will also support establishment of customer feedback mechanisms within the WSS utility,
including a customer call center and a smartphone application to address complaints, questions,
requests for repairs, and general feedback on the services provided. All of the citizen engagement
activities and customer feedback mechanisms will be overseen and managed by a customer
relations officer designated within the Project Company and in coordination with a social focal
point within the Project Management Office (PMO) (see section III).
(c) Support for engineering works. The project will support engineering works for both water supply
and sanitation, as listed below. All investments under the project will be implemented and
operated by the Project Company, providing the JDG with a single interface and contracting party,
rather than the many contractors and operators.
(i) For improved access to higher quality and more efficient piped water systems. The project
will support consolidation and upgrading of the current 40 treatment facilities operated by
different providers (of which 32 utilize groundwater as source, 7 utilize surface water, and
1 utilizes a nearby urban water treatment plant [WTP] as source) to a more integrated
configuration using two centralized surface WTPs27—one newly constructed (Bailong WTP,
with capacity of 25,000 m3 per day) and one expanded (Xinliu WTP, with capacity of 2,000
m3 per day)—operated by a single service provider. The above activities will lead to a more
efficiently operated utility and an increased supply of good quality water. The project will
also support protection of drinking water source sites and water intakes/wells, construction
and rehabilitation of pipe networks to expand the network and reduce losses/NRW
(including 148 km of transmission main, 347 km of distribution pipes, and 459 km of
household connection pipes), and installation of 86,000 smart meters. All these investments
will increase the supply of water and the service reliability, thus increasing community
resilience to potential climate change-related droughts. The project will also fully finance
the costs of household water supply connections, targeting to cover 94 percent of
households.
(ii) For improved access to higher quality and more efficient sanitation. The project will
support upgrading four existing WWTPs28 with a total capacity of 12,400 m3 per day and
construction of 10 new WWTPs29 with total capacity of 335 m3 per day. The project will
support construction of 93 km of trunk sewer pipes, 788 km of branch network sewer pipes,
1,063 km of household service pipes, and 51 wastewater pump stations (42 new and 9
existing septic collection tanks converted into pump stations). In hilly areas, the project will
support construction of individual household septic tanks to serve 6,712 scattered
households. The project will fully finance the costs of household sewer service connections
and septic tanks, for a total of 60,086 households. All these activities will reduce the volume
of untreated wastewater discharged into water bodies, reducing pollution and lowering
health risks to the population, as well as lowering the cost of treating the wastewater to
given standards.
(iii) Other works. There will also be improvements to public facilities, including providing access
to services for the disabled. Recent projects in China have also demonstrated that making
small investments in community public areas to enhance residents’ experience creates an
environment where households are more willing to connect. The Feasibility Study Report
(FSR) design includes some small investments for rehabilitation, ‘greening’, and
beautification of public areas.
Component 2: Institutional Capacity Building and Technical Assistance (TA) for PPP Oversight, Project
Management, and Scale Up of the PPP Approach (Estimated cost: US$1.0 million; IBRD loan: US$1.0
million).
35. This component has four key activity areas:
(a) Engagement of a project manager/independent engineer. The project will support the hiring of
an independent engineer (consultant) to oversee the performance of the PPP Agreement, to
supervise infrastructure construction, and to supervise the environmental and social
management of the project. The independent engineer will also be responsible for verifying the
KPI results and the energy and water efficiency gains reported by the Project Company against
the targets in the PPP Agreement.
(b) Local government capacity building for PPP oversight and project management. The public
counterpart (especially HUDB and the PMO) will have key functions that are not delegated to the
Project Company, including implementation of WSS policy and regulations, regulatory oversight
of the Project Company, business planning, tariff setting, long-term asset management, and WSS
system planning. The project will include capacity-building activities to support HUDB and the
PMO carry out these functions, such as project management and PPP oversight training, technical
training, FM, and PPP procurement training, as well as study tours of successful water sector PPP
projects in China and abroad. Project management and implementation support will include
management of and coordination with the independent engineer; establishment and operation
of a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system; monitoring of Project Company KPI and efficiency
performance; and acquisition of office equipment, vehicles, and other operating resources
(c) Coordination of gender inclusion and citizen engagement (GI&CE) activities. The project will
support the PMO to supervise and monitor the GI&CE activities and customer feedback
mechanisms executed by the Project Company (described in Subcomponent 1b). The PMO will
designate a social focal point to coordinate closely with the Project Company on the communitybased satisfaction survey, the community meetings, and the operations of the customer call
center and smartphone application (see the institutional arrangements discussion in section III).
(d) Documentation and sharing of project experience (including lessons learned and PPP project
templates). The project will support TA activities to identify mechanisms for scaling up the PPP
approach developed under this project to other areas across Sichuan and China. In particular, the
project’s overall lessons in institutional strengthening and structuring the PPP will be highly
relevant to upstream PPP policies in China, including the implementation and investment
decisions under the ongoing Sichuan Province Three-Year Action Plan (see section I). Specific TA
activities include (i) preparing a summary report on experiences and lessons learned in PPP
project preparation and procurement, (ii) preparation of PPP template documents to be used in
the scale-up and replication of the project approach (for example, model contracts, bidding
documents, and project management tools), and (iii) dissemination events/publications at the
provincial/national level.
Readiness of PPP Transaction
36. The project has been prepared to meet domestic requirements as well as taking international good
practice into account. It is anticipated that: (a) requests for proposals for the PPP will be issued to qualified
bidders in June 2020. The request for proposals will be only sent to pre-qualified firms that can demonstrate
that they meet the technical and financial requirements to deliver the required services. To pre-qualify,
companies would have to submit information on their ownership, qualifications, experience, and financial
statements, allowing for a transparent process to assess the eligibility of a company to be pre-qualified; b) the
private sector partner will be selected by October 2020, and (c) the PPP will reach financial close by December
2020 and that construction will commence soon thereafter. The construction (Phase 1) is expected to be
completed by the end of 2024; the PPP will then step into Phase 2 (O&M) from the beginning of 2025. The PPP
procurement documents and procurement processes will be subject to World Bank Operations Procurement
Review Committee30 (OPRC) review and no objection. |
