Cabinet approves amendment to Construction Technology Promotion Act enforcement decree, allowing design cost-effectiveness reviews to be skipped

Workers carry out recovery operations in North Chungcheong Province after the area was inundated by heavy rains last year. [Herald DB]
Workers carry out recovery operations in North Chungcheong Province after the area was inundated by heavy rains last year. [Herald DB]

South Korea has cleared the way for natural disaster recovery projects to begin more quickly by allowing design cost-effectiveness reviews and other administrative procedures to be skipped or scaled back.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said Monday that a Cabinet meeting approved an amendment to the enforcement decree of the Construction Technology Promotion Act, aimed at accelerating recovery work in disaster-affected areas and reducing inconvenience for residents.

The amended decree explicitly adds "construction work carried out under disaster recovery plans pursuant to the Natural Disaster Countermeasures Act" to the list of projects eligible for streamlined administrative procedures.

Existing rules already allowed emergency construction work, including disaster recovery, to proceed with adjusted procedures, but local governments and field-level agencies had long struggled to determine whether a given project qualified as an emergency. The amendment is expected to resolve that ambiguity for the roughly 9,000 disaster recovery projects conducted annually under the Natural Disaster Countermeasures Act, allowing design cost-effectiveness reviews and related steps to be skipped or modified — cutting the time to begin recovery work by an estimated two to three months.

Alongside this, the ministry said amendments to the enforcement rules of the Construction Technology Promotion Act would also take effect, allowing regional construction technology review committees to waive design and construction adequacy reviews for disaster recovery projects, further accelerating the response.

"With the full rainy season approaching, proactive preparation for natural disasters such as floods and storms is more important than ever," said Kim Myeong-jun, the ministry's director general for technology and safety policy. "We hope this will lay the groundwork for swift disaster recovery construction that protects the safety and well-being of the public."


smh@heraldcorp.com