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Sweco wins environmental management contract for Song Hinh Dam

Development Today - 16 March 2001

Sweco wins environmental management contract for Song Hinh Dam

The Swedish engineering firm Sweco International has won a SEK 5.2 million contract with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) to monitor the environment and social impacts of the Swedish-financed Song Hinh Dam in Vietnam.

This is Sweco's second Song Hinh contract. The firm was part of the Nordic coalition of companies that constructed the dam in the mid-1990s.

Team Leader for the current contract is Lennart Lundberg, who worked until 1998 for one of Sweco's rivals, Swedpower, when that company had a separate Sida contract to monitor the construction of Song Hinh.

Eight companies (seven of them Swedish) submitted bids for this international tender: Sweco, a joint-bid by Swedpower International and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), Jaakko Pöyry Sweden, Sycon, Hifab International, IVL (Svenska Miljö Institutet), ÅF International, and the British Environment Resources Management Ltd.

SEI's Anders Arvidson, who is currently employed at Sida for a few months to work on small-scale energy issues, was until recently responsible for the Song Hinh project. He was taken off the project because his regular employer, SEI, was one of the bidders.

Mirjam Palm at Sida's Infrastructure and Economic Cooperation Department (INEC) who has replaced Arvidson on the project says Sweco was the “clear winner”.

Lundberg comments that he has “good insight into the history of the project”. But he admits that since he and Sweco had been involved in the construction of the dam, there had been some worry that this could have counted against them.

“We thought it might make it difficult to get the contract,” he says to Development Today.

The three-year project involves training staff of the Vietnamese utility, Electricty of Vietnam (EVN) to manage and monitor environmental and social impacts and to design and assist with monitoring activities.

Sida's terms of reference specify that the project must comply with the guidelines and recommendations of the World Commission on Dams (WCD), including minimum flow requirements, compensation to affected people and full participation of local communities. (See DT 20/00)

On the WCD's report Lundberg had this to say:

“Sweco has no official position on the [WCD report]. We haven't really reviewed it in detail. We don't know yet what it will imply. Though there are some new issues, many we've been acquainted with for the last ten years. Basically, we think it's a very good document.”

The environmental impact assessment for Song Hinh states that for nine months of the year “the quantity of water downstream of the main dam is strongly reduced because it is kept in the reservoir”.

Lundberg comments that it is “too early to have an opinion” about issues like minimum flow and com-pensation to affected people.

Development Today No. 4 March 16, 2001

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