Last week, you learned about one of the most significant changes introduced by the amendment to the Construction Law – a completely new form of the construction design. As a reminder, under the new regulations, it will consist of:
- a plot or land development plan – submitted when applying for a building permit or reporting construction,
- architectural and construction design – submitted at the time of submitting an application for a building permit or reporting a construction project requiring its submission,
- technical design – submitted to the construction supervision authority at the stage of submitting an application for an occupancy permit or notification of completion of works.
In today's alert, we'll take a look at the third part of the construction design – the technical design. According to the Amendment, it will consist of:
- designed structural solutions of the facility along with the results of static and strength calculations,
- energy performance – in the case of buildings,
- designed necessary technical and material solutions,
- depending on the needs – geological-engineering documentation or geotechnical conditions of the foundation of buildings,
- other design studies.
The question "when will a technical design be required?" is much easier to answer the other way around – when it won't be required. A technical design is not required for the construction or reconstruction of building facilities and underground utilities, if the entire issue can be addressed in a plot or land development plan (new wording of Art. 34, Section 3b of the Building Law), and, of course, when work is being performed that does not require a notification or a building permit.
The technical design will not be approved by the architectural and construction authority. It will need to be submitted to the construction supervision authority when applying for an occupancy permit. Therefore, the technical design will be verified for compliance with the previous parts of the construction design only at the stage of the occupancy permit application process. However, this does not mean that the investor will be able to delay its preparation until the very end of construction work – pursuant to Article 42, Section 1, Item 4) of the amended Construction Law, the investor is responsible for submitting the construction design, along with the technical design (if required), to the construction manager before work begins.
Due to the subsequent technical design review procedure, doubts are emerging in the industry regarding the future practice of administrative bodies regarding a situation in which, after a facility has been constructed and during the process of obtaining an occupancy permit, it may turn out that the technical design contains irregularities and is not properly coordinated with other elements of the construction design. According to the amendment, the architectural and construction administration body will not have the authority to evaluate the technical solutions used in the construction design. However, it cannot be ruled out that the authorities will attempt to conduct such an assessment, for example, under the amended Article 59a, Section 2 of the Construction Law.
Although the technical design will be presented after the investment is completed, it cannot be considered the execution design. This position has also been adopted by the Polish Chamber of Civil Engineers, emphasizing that the scope and form of the technical design will not overlap with the execution design. Therefore, these terms cannot be used interchangeably.
As every week, we have published on our website a prepared comparison of the wording of the provisions of construction law according to the applicable legal status and the amended content.
We encourage you to follow our articles regularly – in just one week we will indicate the scope of changes regarding possible significant deviations from the approved project.
Download the table containing the changes
This material is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.
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