The meeting, which was chaired by Minister of Regional Development Igor Slyunyayev, focused on applying estimate standards to establish and clarify construction costs at various stages of the investment and construction process. The meeting participants also discussed measures to reduce construction costs of the government-funded projects.
Errors in determining construction costs appear as early as the budget planning stage. Therefore, it has been proposed to review standard construction rates on an annual basis. This will greatly reduce the possibility for inflating construction costs at the project estimation stage.
The main problem at the stage of project planning is that the rates in the project estimate are often inconsistent with actual existing standards. The meeting participants suggested developing and updating the standard rates for construction work.
The Federal Center for Construction Pricing has already created a classification of standard construction works and proposed putting them into effect by September of this year. To exclude the inflation of costs for design and survey work, the meeting participants suggested developing standard construction rates for major non-industrial facilities and utility infrastructure.
To avoid cost increases by exaggerating project estimation time, it was proposed to amend Government Resolution No 87 On the Contents of the Design Documentation, adding a requirement for including job schedules.
Following the discussion, Mr Slyunyaev ordered the creation of a working group to draft priority measures aimed at reducing the cost of design, survey, construction and assembly works.
