The construction industry, since Soviet times, has attracted the “super-profitability” of various “inspectors” who, lacking professional skills, could boast extraordinary powers. Fortunately, professionals are pushing such “innovators” out of the market – the complexity of the objects themselves and the correspondingly high level of responsibility require an objective assessment by industry specialists, which will guarantee, first of all, safety for homeowners and legal business conduct for developers. We talk about the expectations of the construction market with Viktor Leshchynsky, head of the PROEKSP company and president of the National Expert Construction Alliance of Ukraine.
– President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that the State Urban Planning Inspectorate should cease to exist. Instead, the State Urban Planning Inspectorate and the State Agency for Technical Regulation in Urban Planning should be established. The project is being criticized. He said that the main reform should be the introduction of the Unified State Electronic System in the field of construction. What is your opinion on this matter?
– The idea of liquidating such a body and creating several others instead of it, in my opinion, is unsuccessful. Why? There is a personnel shortage in the country, all these areas could remain in one structure, but in different departments, including the state registration service. As for control, the control department of the State Agency for the Protection of the Environment and Natural Resources of Ukraine – and another new body – of the legal direction, will be duplicated by the Ministry of Regional Development of Communities and Territories. In fact, technical regulation is a function of the Ministry of Communities, so one of the new bodies will be a “double”.
As for the single database for issuing permits for construction sites – this is an idea for the promising medium-term future. It is physically impossible to implement this electronic service by the end of the year – these are more than 20 documents that are difficult to understand. In order to collect them, you need to get technical specifications from our municipal and state services – energy, regional gas, cultural heritage approval and many others – this is a whole range of documentation that must be digitized, contained in certain databases of departments and structures and integrated into the builder’s office. I can say that these are years of constant work, under normal financing conditions the project is implemented in no less than 3 years.
– How has the activity of the architectural and construction inspection been transformed in recent years?
– Until 2017, the declarative method of obtaining permits in the construction sector greatly shook both the project market and state supervision of construction sites. A large number of violations occurred precisely from 2012 to 2017, when a simplified system for issuing permits was introduced – declarations on the start of construction and commissioning of the facility.
With such an easy possibility of obtaining permits, large complexes were put into operation without special control. Construction customers submitted only a completed form, which was published on the DABI website. No expertise, no archived project of this facility, except for a brief report on technical and economic indicators, was provided.
In 2017, a mandatory norm was introduced – passing an expertise. This entailed the requirement to develop a construction project, submit it for expertise and transfer to DABI a full set of documents regarding the start of construction.
There are pros and cons here. The positive thing is that the collection of documents and their filtering through expertise improved the conditions for transparent construction business, and the negative thing is that DABI, as an inspection body for supervision and control over the construction industry and the quality of the construction process, received enormous powers to verify and issue permits. The negative thing is that this inspection has qualitatively transformed into a construction police, this was facilitated by the fact that there was no requirement for its representatives to have professional education in the architectural and construction field, so most of the inspectors in the regions were lawyers, teachers, accountants.
Abuses were enormous – starting from unprofessional drafting of documents after the inspection and ending with open blackmail of construction companies – both state and private.
The inspection has actually taken over the powers of the inquisition and has become a punitive body of the government for everyone. Throughout its existence, there were complaints about corruption schemes, the lack of a market for quality services – everyone understood that conditions were being created for the construction sector to be squeezed as much as possible. In addition, the inspectorate worked closely with law enforcement agencies, using not entirely legal schemes, they tried to “punish” in court those whose activities they did not like.
At that time, the number of licensed business entities increased – this is a large proportion of fake organizations that, through schemes, participated in the formation of the construction market so that companies that only yesterday received licenses could participate in state tenders and win them with two people. You can even now find a full price list for obtaining construction licenses on the Internet – they will bring it directly to the office.
There will always be a temptation to take bribes for permits, so I suggested making their issuance simply a paid administrative service, in addition to the bribes paid for it. That way, the money would go to the state budget.
– The government has abolished licensing of construction companies and introduced certification of contractors. What will this change in the industry?
– Regarding the elimination of licenses: large design companies have been liquidated and the creation of certification of foremen is a long-standing topic that relates to self-regulation. This was the only category of responsible persons in construction who were not certified.
But to make it so that one person creates conditions for 10 construction companies is unreasonable.
Licensing is being transformed into more stringent forms.
Objects of different classes of consequences are being built, and if we leave only foremen, we will get undesirable results in a couple of years.
There are currently no conditions to change the law “On Architectural Activities”.
Today, there is not a single certified foreman in Ukraine. Licensing is being canceled without giving an alternative. But in order to change something, it takes time to adapt. Transformations should not send the construction market into a fever because someone decided to change the rules of the game today for tomorrow.
What will change, you ask?
Today, depending on the category of construction, there is a certified architect. This is a high level of education and considerable experience.
According to the new rules, in case of violations, a specific person will be fined, not an enterprise.
But how can one person – a foreman understand what designing or building a large building or facility is? It turns out that responsibility is inadequate to education and knowledge. Another forecast – the prices for the services of the first such foreman will rise to “cosmic” heights. Meanwhile, the organization that will certify foreman will generate new schemes for lobbyists. In short, this is a quick solution, but of poor quality…
– Forensic examination conducted by NPO SPECTR and LLC PROEKSP, post-facto forensic examination – what is the complexity and why is it important to trust specialized specialists?
– A few years ago, construction companies turned to us as specialists – local authorities, through a so-called “expertise” of the actually performed work, obliged them to pay their fines in the amount of 3 or 4 million UAH.
We came to the conclusion that state construction sites are often victims of law enforcement officers, who see a corruption component in the fact that the site is state-owned.
Therefore, many construction corporations simply refuse to go to construction sites of state ownership. They clearly know: in the next three years
They will be “visited” by all inspections and will demand money, despite the fact that in most cases everything is not so bad.
An objective assessment of the work contractor’s activities can only be given by a specialized specialist with a higher construction education, and not by a representative of law enforcement agencies. Moreover, the legislation has given us many tools for this. There is the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, which has created an institute of forensic experts in construction areas. There are also auditors – this is a de facto alternative to financial inspection.
If we combine in the expert environment what we did almost 2 years ago – professional forensic experts accredited by the Ministry of Justice in the field of construction, certified experts accredited by guilds entrusted to the Ministry of Regional Development and Construction, doctors and candidates of science with technical education from specialized construction universities with a theoretical scientific focus, as well as professional certified auditors – a group of experts is created who provide pre-trial investigation – this is a huge evidentiary base to prove whether there were violations during the performance of work or not.
It is clear that the investigation is not cheap, so every specialist who signs his signature will not commit any violation.
This is an alternative to state inspections – transparent and competent. We try to publicize our activities as widely as possible: on TV channels, in magazines, online publications. Our experts are involved in programs on radio companies.
The National Expert Construction Alliance conducts its campaign as publicly as possible. In this form of cooperation between the customer and the contractor and the professional expert environment, involving all interested parties, paying them an official salary and involving science in the real sector of the economy to consider certain issues, we associate many positive features: science, which actually builds all the technical regulations and theoretical foundations of the industry, joins in the consideration of real projects online.
Experts are constantly training, exchanging experience, involving student groups, considering real life examples at universities.
We are ready for the fact that the customer of construction, starting from open bidding for a particular project and its implementation, already lays down in the tender documentation the prospect of a mandatory audit by experts before the final signing of the acts of completed work.
We hold many round tables with court administrations and law enforcement agencies. I hope that society will contribute to this direction as much as possible, in order to report to the Ukrainian government on such mechanisms. Maximum public activity will break the system of corrupt segmental moments and translate this into market relations, because professionals should earn money from the processes.
– We are smoothly moving to the rights of investors – people who invest money in a new building during the construction phase. We know the dramas with “Elita-Center”, “Houses of Voitsekhovsky”, and now – Ukrbud, when the investor in our country is unprotected. How to protect the investor-owner of a future apartment? By the way, they say that there are only 5-6 developers on the domestic construction market who can be trusted… What do you think about that?
– In construction, the relationship between customers and investors, who must acquire property rights, must be transformed. This is all done simply – by involving insurance companies, or better yet – the state.
We need to get as close as possible to the purchase and sale of property in a finished state. The entire civilized world involves banking systems and insurance companies in construction companies. If you aim to obtain property rights in a house, office or apartment, you put money on deposit in a bank that lends to a construction company at a minimum interest rate. Now there is a great threat of economic collapse – in the billions of bonds issued, each Ukrainian will pay 35 percent from his own pocket.
The housing market is oversaturated – thousands of apartments are standing without owners. We need to stop the anarchy in the administration of builders by state bodies. And also – to change people’s attitude towards taking care of their own housing, because they have to take care of their own house themselves – its maintenance can be considered at the municipal level, because you pay taxes there, but the area of responsibility lies with the residents personally.
And at the state level – to conduct at least basic inspections of buildings and structures and understand what property the city manages – its condition, estimated value and prospects. It is not necessary to demonstrate “facades” to state administrators – 100 schools and kindergartens – they are built every year anyway, but to understand that all our communication systems are on the verge of collapse – the pipes, for example, have all rotted – only the directions remain – and so on in all sectors. And we continue to proclaim populist slogans…
