State construction projects will be led through checkpoints

The White House is launching a monitoring system for federally funded construction projects. The construction process will be monitored in real time to assess the risks of its delay and make timely decisions, for example, on transferring funds for the accelerated implementation of other projects. It is expected that the system being implemented will reduce the risk of “unfinished construction” – now at the federal and regional levels there are already more than 80 thousand such facilities with a total capital investment cost of 5 trillion rubles.

The government has approved a resolution to create a monitoring system for the construction of facilities being built with federal funding – it is assumed that it will be possible to monitor the progress of construction in real time. It should be noted that within the framework of the Federal Targeted Investment Program (FAIP) in 2024–2026, it is planned to implement 6.5 thousand projects with budgetary funding from the center.

According to Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin, the launch of monitoring is scheduled for January 1, 2024 – the system has already been tested in pilot mode, and information and technical support is being prepared. Monitoring will be organized in the “Electronic Budget” system. The Deputy Prime Minister explained that nine mandatory control points of the construction process have been selected: from obtaining a positive conclusion from the state examination, providing the customer with a site and obtaining a construction permit to connecting to networks and registering rights to the object.

When concluding an agreement on the provision of a subsidy for co-financing by the federal center of the construction or acquisition of an object (except for the purchase of housing to form a specialized fund to support certain categories of citizens), the relevant department and the region will determine control points and deadlines for achieving them – these indicators will be “immersed” in the monitoring system . Then developers and regions will provide information on the actual implementation of construction stages (with documentary evidence). Note that the final version of the document (the Ministry of Construction prepared the first version of the project in September, see Kommersant on September 4) did not include a rather strict direct ban on adjusting control points (it was assumed that this would be permissible only in the event of a change in the state program or a reduction in subsidies ).

It is expected that the introduction of monitoring will make it possible to identify risks and make timely management decisions – in particular, to transfer funds from “lagging” objects for the accelerated completion of other construction projects. The system is also designed to reduce the amount of “unfinished work”. As Vladimir Gorodetsky, first deputy chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Federal Structure, Regional Policy and Local Self-Government, previously reported, in Russia there are about 66 thousand regional and almost 15 thousand federal “unfinished” facilities with a total capital investment of 5 trillion rubles.

The emergence of monitoring continues the restructuring of public capital investment management that began in 2020, caused by many years of criticism of the FAIP due to the slow development of budget funds and the formation of “unfinished projects.” As part of this work, the “transfer” of funds between objects was allowed without editing the budget to increase the flexibility of the FAIP, a “Single Customer in the Construction Industry” was created to complete problem projects, a clearer management vertical was built, and a plan was approved to combat “unfinished construction” ( see “Kommersant” dated April 5, 2022), for which a list of objects is being compiled that must be completed first.

Evgenia Kryuchkova