The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said on the 23rd it will fully introduce a national certification supervision system to boost the expertise and independence of construction site supervision for stronger safety management, and will announce on the 24th a plan to select outstanding construction engineers.
The national certification supervision system departs from the existing method of grading supervisors based only on education, career, and licenses, and is a system that selects outstanding supervisors whose skills and expertise are verified directly by the state. The ministry said selected supervisors will receive benefits such as extra points during the bidding process, with the core goal of fostering outstanding supervisors.
The system was pursued for introduction after the investigation into the Incheon Geomdan accident on Apr. 2023 identified insufficient structural safety review by supervisors as one of the causes. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport prepared the legal basis by revising the Enforcement Decree and Enforcement Rules of the Construction Technology Promotion Act in Jun.
This year, up to 150 nationally certified supervisors will be selected first from construction project management engineers in the building facilities field.
Eligible applicants are engineers who scored 90 points or higher in the comprehensive evaluation for participation in construction project management services in the building facilities field conducted from 2023 to this year. Applicants can check their eligibility on the application site on the Korea Authority of Land & Infrastructure Safety (KALIS) website.
Applications will be accepted online for two weeks from the 10th to the 24th of next month via the application site on the Korea Authority of Land & Infrastructure Safety (KALIS) website. After document screening, interviews will be held in Dec., and the final selection results will be announced in Dec.
Those selected this year as outstanding construction engineers (nationally certified supervisors) will be given benefits so they can be preferentially assigned next year to construction project management services for public housing ordered by the Korea Land & Housing Corporation (LH), and incentives will be granted in future evaluations of project execution capability and in comprehensive evaluation bid systems.
From next year, the ministry plans to expand beyond the building facilities field to various areas including roads and transportation facilities, water resources facilities, and complex development, and to select up to about 400 nationally certified supervisors.
The ministry said the national certification supervision system was prepared based on the outcomes of discussions by the public-private joint supervision system improvement task force (TF), which was operated to strengthen the independence and expertise of the supervision system.
Kim Tae-byeong, director general for technology and safety policy at the ministry, said, "The national certification supervision system does not stop at simply selecting outstanding supervisors; it is a system that further strengthens safety at construction sites by enhancing supervisors' technical capability and accountability," adding, "We will continue to refine the improvements identified by the supervision system improvement TF and build safer construction sites where the public can feel at ease."