The General Office of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-rural Development ("MOHURD") has recently issued the Circular on Organizing and Launching Supervisory Law Enforcement Inspections of Construction Markets and Quality and Safety of Projects Nationwide (the "Circular").
The Circular states that as for construction markets and quality and safety of projects, five construction projects and four urban rail transit projects will be randomly selected for inspection, adding that the housing projects should be mainly those for building residential houses for resettlement or those houses for social security purpose and that the visual progress of each project under inspection should suggest the ongoing construction of its main body. As regards energy efficiency of buildings, three newly-built building energy efficiency projects and three green construction projects, in cities at and above the prefecture level, as well as three newly-built building energy efficiency projects in county-level cities (districts), will be randomly selected for inspection. Moreover, the Circular notes that supervisory checks will be carried out to identify if there is any illegal contracting, unlawful transfer of the contracting, or illegal subcontracting, of construction projects, or a construction project is contracted in other's name, and then investigations will be opened into such irregularities. Inspections intended for looking at the energy efficiency of buildings will include checks of energy efficiency performance of buildings in 2018, checks of the progress in green buildings in 2018, checks of last year's efforts at promoting prefabricated buildings, and checks of the application of green construction materials in 2018. The Circular also specifies that these inspections will be carried out in two batches respectively in May and September this year.