On May 11, the Vietnam Road Administration (Ministry of Construction) said that Minister of Construction Tran Hong Minh had just sent a document to the Central Party Office regarding the proposal of Son Hai Group.
According to the proposal of Son Hai Group, it is proposed to adjust the regulation "construction warranty for a minimum of 10 years".
Son Hai Group commented: "The fact that the project is degraded, after 2 years of warranty, the state has to spend a very large amount of money on maintenance. In 2025 alone, the Vietnam Road Administration has allocated more than 12,500 billion VND, not including 34 provinces and cities, if added nationwide, the state has to spend a very large amount of money" and "If the warranty period is extended by 1 year, the Vietnam Road Administration alone will save more than 12,500 billion VND per year, if extended by 08 years, it will save more than 100,000 billion VND. If including localities, the saving figure for the budget is very large".
According to the Ministry of Construction, the above assessment is not true to the nature of warranty and maintenance work and has no basis.
The proposal to increase the warranty period to a minimum of 10 years for all types of works is not based on practical and technical grounds.
With the characteristics of construction projects having many types, many levels, scales, different technical characteristics and items in one project with different warranty requirements, the specific regulation of the maximum warranty period or increasing the minimum warranty period in legal documents to apply generally to all types of projects will not be appropriate.
Based on the characteristics and technical nature of the project, the investor decides to extend the warranty period of the project and project items compared to the provisions of law when organizing the selection of construction contractors and regulations in the construction contract.
The Ministry of Construction added that, according to a report by the Vietnam Association of Road Transport Works Investors: If a fixed minimum warranty of 10 years is applied to the entire transport project, guarantee costs, insurance, risk provision and bid prices will increase significantly.
Especially in the current context, businesses are facing a lot of pressure to increase fuel and material prices, transportation costs, and loan interest costs.
On the other hand, this recommendation is not consistent with the common management experience of some countries in the region.
The proposal to extend the warranty period to 10 years will coincide with the time of periodic repair work according to the requirements of the maintenance process. Therefore, it is not consistent with the nature of construction warranty work, which is to repair defects under the responsibility of the construction contractor.
Another noteworthy content is that Son Hai Group proposed to stipulate that contractors must publicly place signs on the route for people participating in traffic to supervise, so that contractors will know fear and have the awareness to do well from the beginning.
Regarding this proposal, the Ministry of Construction said that, according to regulations, during construction, from the start of construction to the completion of the project, the investor is responsible for installing construction signs at the construction site, in the content of the signs there is the content: Name, address, phone number of the investor, construction contractor, construction design organization and organization or individual supervising construction.
Improving the quality of works requires many fundamental and synchronous solutions such as perfecting the technical standard system, tightening management from design to construction, improving the capacity of investors/contractors and strengthening actual inspection and supervision, not just raising contractor awareness.
In addition, the installation of construction warranty information signs that are not road signs, do not serve traffic participants, may affect and jam information for traffic participants; the collection of opinions and feedback from traffic participants has been carried out through hotlines of road management agencies and traffic police on signs on the route, as well as on mass media and social networks.
Therefore, this content needs to be studied to propose regulations on the principle of ensuring compliance with regulations, technical standards and ensuring traffic safety and construction safety according to regulations.
According to information obtained by the Ministry of Construction, currently no country stipulates that contractors are required to publicly display the contractor's name after completing the project.
In addition, some projects and works include many participating contractors, so when it is necessary to assess quality, the warranty work of the project must also clearly identify the cause of responsibility to which contractor, this needs to be assessed and assigned responsibility by a specialized agency, not just for traffic participants to evaluate because it is not really objective.
To ensure publicity, transparency, and meet the requirements of digital transformation and information technology application, the Ministry of Construction will direct specialized agencies to research proposals in the direction of publicizing on the National Database System on construction activities and on the information pages of the Ministry of Construction and localities related to the project.
