Two of the more notable trends in development thinking relating to public works over the past decade are the increasing emphasis on private sector execution and the growing appreciation that the technological flexibility of the sector permits a high level of employment creation. In several Asian countries, these trends have been fostered by international technical cooperation projects aiming to introduce labor-based techniques and/or to improve the performance of small-scale domestic contractors. This article reviews eight such projects in countries with a variety of operational environments, distinguishing between projects where the task was contractor development and those where there was a more ambitious goal of construction industry development. It offers a model for mobilizing private sector capacity and concludes that a more coherent and replicable approach to project design and execution could yield substantial benefits.
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