An amendment to the Enforcement Decree of the Construction Technology Promotion Act, which allows adjustment of procedures for carrying out construction work to expedite recovery in disaster-hit areas, was approved at a Cabinet meeting on the 2nd.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport explicitly added "construction work under disaster recovery plans pursuant to the Countermeasures against Natural Disasters Act" to the types of projects for which administrative procedures for implementing construction work may be adjusted and carried out under the amendment.
Previously, construction work that "must be carried out urgently, such as disaster recovery," could also have its process adjusted. However, on the ground, including at basic local governments carrying out disaster recovery, it was difficult to determine whether routine disaster recovery work qualified as "urgent work," making it hard to actively apply the relevant regulations.
With the enforcement of this amendment, the roughly 9,000 disaster recovery projects carried out annually under recovery plans pursuant to the Countermeasures against Natural Disasters Act will be able to omit or adjust procedures such as value engineering for design. Recovery start times and the pace of project execution after a disaster will accelerate.
In addition, under an amendment to the Enforcement Rule of the Construction Technology Promotion Act slated to take effect early this month, disaster recovery projects under the Countermeasures against Natural Disasters Act will also be able to omit the design and construction adequacy review by the Local Construction Technology Deliberation Committee, which is expected to speed up disaster recovery further.
Kim Myeong-jun, director-general for Technology and Safety Policy at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT), said, "We expect this legal amendment to provide a foundation for protecting public safety by enabling disaster recovery projects to move forward with greater speed."