Speed, predictability, simplification, transparency and compliance with deadlines guaranteed by their fiction… These expectations related 32,000 experts associated in the Czech Chamber of Authorized Engineers and Technicians Active in Construction (ČKAIT) to the new Building Act. At the same time, they prefer that the transformation of building offices, including the reduction of their number, take place only after the complete digitization of building management.
ČKAIT subjected the new building law as a key legal regulation for the entire construction industry to a careful analysis. It follows that an amendment to the adopted new building law is necessary. Many of the more than 150 key comments that the Chamber has repeatedly made on the recodification of building law, since its inception in 2017, have remained unheard. At the same time, they can have a direct impact on the promised acceleration of construction permitting processes without compromising the quality of construction.
This is one of the reasons why the professional organization of authorized civil engineers, technicians and builders will re-initiate in order to enforce most of its fundamental comments within the framework of the prepared amendments to this Act. ČKAIT members are on all sides of the construction process. Some represent the builders as the technical supervision of the investor, others design the constructions and others implement or inspect and professionally assess them.
The speed of the permitting procedure itself, and everywhere declared, is not guaranteed by the new legislation. It does not impose sanctions or other sanctions for building authorities for non-compliance with deadlines. These are set at 30 resp. 60 days, but so it was before. The change is thus purely formal. In the event of an interruption of the construction procedure due to defects in the application, the deadline for issuing the decision will start running again from the beginning after their removal. In the current practice, the proceedings have only been interrupted. The declared shortening of deadlines in the new Building Act is therefore only an optical illusion.
In this respect, according to the Chamber, it is therefore secondary whether the construction process will pass from the self-government to the state administration, or whether or where the Supreme Building Authority will be established. “Designers or builders don’t care which office they take or ideally send digital project documentation to. It is crucial for all that the permitting process works and takes place predictably and within the deadlines set by law. Of course, we are aware that the transition of officials to the state administration would not be easy and could temporarily paralyze the system,” states Ing. Robert Špalek, Chairman of ČKAIT.
Also, the promised simplification and reduction of the scope of project documentation of constructions, which the new building law was supposed to bring, is rather declaratory. For the construction permit, only the documentation at the level of the existing zoning procedure, extended by the basic architectural and technical solution of the plan, should suffice. However, according to ČKAIT, such a simplified base does not allow the assessment of the construction in terms of fire safety, environmental impact, environment and other parameters of future construction. And since the law allows building authorities to require the subsequent submission of documentation for the construction process as part of the permitting process (this should always apply to the Fire and Rescue Service for categories II and III), ultimately no simplification is required. On the contrary, there is a risk that the whole system will return to a two-stage authorization procedure in even greater detail than it is now.
According to ČKAIT, only the coordination of authorities and bodies, transparency and digitization of the entire construction procedure can guarantee speed. Hand in hand with the certainty that the new building law will not lead to the disintegration of the existing system and the collapse of all construction proceedings.
“As a professional chamber of engineers, technicians and builders working in the construction industry, we are ready to actively cooperate on all the changes that should be reflected in the amendment to the new Building Act. This also applies to the digitization for which our Chamber is ready and which we have supported from the beginning. As of January 2022, all ČKAIT authorized persons can use a digital authorization stamp to authorize their project documentation. We will make every effort to ensure that the recodification of construction law brings the expected simplification, acceleration and, thanks to transparency, also the improvement of the construction environment in the Czech Republic,” adds Ing. Robert Špalek. ČKAIT has long been involved in the field of lifelong vocational training of authorized persons and wants to actively offer this opportunity to employees of building authorities.
The quality of constructions is related, among other things, to the Chamber’s persistent and as yet unfulfilled requirement that the designer’s supervision be made a mandatory standard for constructions financed by the private sector. He should supervise the compliance of the performed construction with the verified project documentation, if the documentation for this construction was prepared by a person authorized according to a special legal regulation (according to Act No. 360/1992 Sb.).
