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 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.