The Genera Office of the Ministry of Transport ("MOT") has recently released the Circular on Launching a Special Program to Rectify the Quality Safety of Highway Tunnel Construction Projects (the "Circular").
The Circular states that, with the focus on eliminating prominent quality safety problems in tunnel construction projects, efforts will be made to intensify regulatory enforcement, solidify enterprises' subject responsibilities, regulate construction management, and strive to achieve targets of reducing relatively major accidents and effectively curb major and extraordinarily serious accidents associated with highway tunnel construction projects in 2018. To this end, the Circular outlines major tasks to rectify problematic situations in six aspects, including "the deficiency of replies to the design documents and the inadequate preparation of specific construction schemes", "the use of substandard building materials and products" and "the failure to construct highway tunnels as per applicable standards or construction schemes", and, for each major task, maps out the corresponding corrective measures. As to the issue concerning the use of substandard building materials and products, among others, the Circular calls for checking the conformity certificate of each batch of raw materials and products transported to the construction site and entrusting third-party inspection agencies to select at random and test key products; these key products, if found defective, shall be returned immediately, and information on the returned key products shall be unveiled as well.