Development News

ekonomika / economy
LEGISLATIVA/ LEGISLATION
to in our last contribution, it covers several relatively
independent sectors. What we consider
fundamental, without trying to reduce others’
significance, is mainly the engineering activity in
the way of securing all permits necessary for
project realisation (we will attend to this topic in
one of our future contributions) and then the
preparation of project documentation and project
assessment from the point of view of EIA. All
these sections of the project’s preparation phase
lead towards the same goal – success of the
project and which take a relatively long time
whereby it might seem, when looking from the
outside, that nothing is occurring with the project.
The opposite is true.
PROJECT DOCUMENTATION
Project documentation generally determines
what the project will look like, how many apartments
or other premises will be there, their size,
how large areas will be intended for development
with either residential houses or family houses
and also what areas must be left undeveloped
within the framework of the project and others.
Project documentation in the building industry
is divided into several levels where each fulfils
a different task. The preparation phase of
a development project is about the investment
plan containing preparation work, positioning
the project within a location, cost estimation
and others. This is followed by an architectural
study. During the architectural study the building
site is checked, also the location suitability,
land properties, area restrictions based on the
outline plan (this is usually executed in further
variants, also with regards to the colour design
of the project). All these questions are important
for developers primarily from the point of view
of a financial plan of the project and its cash flow.
The next levels of project documentation elaborate
the study in detail: A project for the planning
permit is used for decision regarding the positioning
of the building within the plot, a project for the
building permit constitutes a basic material for
the issuing of building permission by the appropriate
building authority (the documentation must
be executed in accordance with regulation No.
499/2006 Ed.) and the project for realising the
construction contains its technical solution, specification
of individual materials, itemized budget including
particular producers and materials, technical
details, all with the aim to allow better control
over costs during construction. The project for the
choice of contractor, which is mainly used for
larger development projects (the situation is different
with public procurements), is, to a certain
extent, of a different character – this allows an assessment
of individual persons (and their credibility)
applying for the post of general contractor of
the building, terms and conditions regarding the
realisation of the building, price offers and others.
WHAT IS EIA?
The law on the environment (whose development
did not occur in the Czech Republic until
after 1989) brought about so called project assessment
from the EIA point of view to the forefront
of developers’ attention, this mainly being
for its time impact on the preparation phase of
a project. The content of the assessment stems
from the English title Environmental Impact Assessment,
as it is about assessing a particular
project’s impact on public health and the environment
(according to the law, it literally assesses
the impact on animals and plants,
ecosystems, soil, rocky environment, water, air,
climate, countryside, natural resources and cultural
landmarks and their mutual impact).
The amendment to the law on environmental
impact assessment, to which the public immediately
adopted a negative stance, has been effective
since this April. The amendment brings
certain changes that can actually prolong the
preparation process of a project but one should,
on the other hand, point out that not every development
project is subject to this assessment
in accordance with this law.
The changes mainly lie in comparison with the
previous legislation in the fact that a new legislation
can be applied on already commenced
administrative permission proceedings for which
the so called EIA statement will be binding (so far
it has been one of the basis and the plan may be
realised with a negative statement). The authority’s
statement that the project is not subject
to the assessment in accordance with the
law on EIA will consist of a character of an administrative
decree; an involved public (whose
range will expand as it will not only include
a public that is directly involved with the construction,
a participant of the procedure or
a public represented by ecological organisations)
will be able to take legal action in subsequent
proceedings. A suspensive effect of such legal
action will be decided upon by the court within
90 days whilst the legal action will also be possible
without any previous participation within
the EIA process. The assessment from the EIA
point of view will count for more as the so called
coherence stamp or certificate confirming that
the project will not change significantly in any
subsequent proceedings.
CONCLUSION
The individual, relatively independent stages of
the preparation phase of the project, connect to
one another. The existence of relevant project
documentation is a condition for the possibility
of having the project assessed in accordance
with the law on EIA as well as for the issuing of
any administrative decision about the construction
(for instance a building permit). The
other stages of the project are not at all different.
That is why it is quite evident that unjustified
time or money savings do not belong to the
preparation phase, this applies to all stages, as
everything is to be restituted at the realisation
phase of the project – that is when mistakes
that were made at the beginning begin to show.
Eliminating their impact would be much more
costly, in some cases completely unrealistic,
than investing due care and attention in project
preparation. We will attend to key phases of the
preparation process of a development project in
more detail in subsequent issues.
ALENA SRBOVÁ,
URBÁŠEK & PARTNERS, ADVOKÁTNÍ KANCELÁŘ, S.R.O.
dn 8–9/2015 47