Introduction of a New System in Design and Construction Defined

On July 6, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev chaired a videoconference on the priority tasks in construction, architecture and urban planning.

Construction is one of the leading sectors of the economy. As a result of the wide opportunities provided in the sphere, the volume and scale of work have increased. More than 8 thousand buildings for 250 thousand apartments, 21 thousand service and more than 10 thousand social facilities, and 31 thousand enterprises have been built over the past five years.

During the same period, the volume of construction work increased fourfold, reaching to 107 trillion Uzbek soums in 2021, and 46 trillion Uzbek soums in five months of this year.

This growth is, indeed, gratifying. Futhermore, there are still shortcomings in the industry, primarily in design and quality assurance. The priority is given to construction, but the focus on architecture has been weakened.

In this regard, the issues of streamlining construction and design works have been primarily considered at the meeting.

In many places, previously approved general layouts no longer correspond to the current demographic and economic growth. According to the analysis of foreign experts, if there are no general plans, infrastructure costs will double by 2030, and agricultural land will be reduced by 30 thousand hectares.

The introduction of a new system on the regulation of construction and design works at makhalla (local neighborhood community area), district, city, regional and republican levels were determined at the meeting.

It was decided to create a Republican Council for the development of general layouts and master plans in the regions. The post of Chief Architect with the status of the First Deputy Minister will be introduced in the Ministry of Construction.

In the regions, the project management offices, headed by the first deputy khokims (governors) and chief architects of the regions will be opened. The architects will manage district and city construction departments.

The development of general and master plans will take place in 3 stages. In the first stage, the Republican Council will have to approve the main scheme of the region indicating the directions of development for 5, 10 and 20-year perspectives, define the boundaries of land and infrastructure in it. On this basis, in the second stage, a general layout for the region will be developed. It will define industrial, service and residential areas, the location of roads and infrastructure networks. In the third stage, the chief architects and first deputies of khokims (mayors and governors) of regions, districts and cities will approve master plans, which will specify the location of housing, schools, kindergartens, hospitals, trade and service facilities.

In short, from now on, the Ministry of Construction will not decide such issues as determining the location of a store in makhallas (local neighborhood community areas) or lighting the building. Such issues will be addressed at the district and makhalla levels.

The President highlighted the issue of improvement urban planning rules and bringing them into line with international standards.

In particular, the procedure for obtaining the conclusion of the technical council for projects prepared on the basis of international standards will be abolished, as well as the projects that have passed expertise abroad will be accepted directly.

Moreover, the system of pricing goods and services in construction has not been regulated. There is no single approach to the evaluation of works. As a result, there is ample scope for embezzlement and corruption.

In this regard, it was decided to exclude 147 norms relating to the evaluation of construction works from the town planning regulations. The task was set to launch the «Classifier of Construction Resources» platform and create conditions for the market pricing for more than 100 thousand construction materials and services.

An electronic catalog of standard projects of social facilities will also be created to reduce the time required to prepare projects in the «Shaffof Qurilish» (‘Transparent Construction’) program. All customers, design and contracting organizations can freely use them.

The activities of companies of a single customer under the khokimiyats (Governor’s offices) of the regions were analyzed at the meeting. The instructions were given to attract foreign managers, qualified architects and engineers, digitalization of the construction process and accounting of the volume of implemented work.

At the same time, starting next year the development of the pre-project documentation of the single customer companies, the technical supervision of the new construction will be gradually transferred to the private sector on the basis of outsourcing.

The President also touched upon the issue of construction quality.

As it was noted at the meeting there is a separate state inspection in this sphere, whose employees see their main task in imposing fines. Although 70% of the shortcomings in construction are repetitive and easy to prevent.

In this regard, the need to review the inspection activities and focus its work on the analysis and elimination of the causes of systemic deficiencies in construction.

The Ministry of Construction was tasked with digitizing all processes from the registration of objects to their commissioning.

In terms of the training of personnel, the need to provide academic and financial independence to architectural institutes in Tashkent and Samarkand was emphasized. Training will be carried out based on international educational programs. Students will be assigned to leading design and survey institutes and construction clusters.

Shortcomings in mortgage lending were also touched upon at the meeting. In particular, the budget for the current year provides 13 trillion Uzbek soums of credit resources to commercial banks for 43 thousand housing units and 1.2 trillion Uzbek soums of subsidies to 29 thousand people. However, to date, only 28-30% of these funds have been allocated.

In this regard, the instructions were given to reduce bureaucracy, organize mortgage centers that will provide comprehensive services to the population.

The ministers, khokims, and their deputies reported on the discussed issues and expressed their opinions and suggestions.