2009-12-23
“Open Day in Construction Site” is Held in Song Jia Zhuang
On Dec. 22, the activity of “Open Day in Construction Site” regarding affordable house is firstly held in Beijing. Here, over 40 house owner representatives, NPC deputies and media representatives are invited to know the project progress themselves and inspect the building quality in the construction site of affordable housing project in Song Jiang Zhuang which is in the Fengtai District of Beijing. Henceforth, this activity will be promoted in the affordable housing project of Beijing as a new measure signifying a social public supervision mechanism.
A person in charge from Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development says that he has hoped to involve common people in the housing construction and resolve their appeal for housing quality in advance via holding the “Open Day in Construction Site” of affordable housing. This will help strengthen public supervision on project quality and construction. The Municipal Commission also requires that construction units should earnestly listen to the criticism and suggestions by house owners and public representatives. They should then summarize and give feedback on these criticisms and suggestions.
Actually, the activity establishes a platform for house owners and construction units to exchange opinions face to face. Through the platform, house owners not only inspect the project progress at a short distance, involve in construction process and get the answer for their concerns from related parties, but also further know the details like project design, construction situations, inspection and acceptance, which raises the public confidence in the project’s quality.
To enhance the government regulation of the affordable housing project, a city-level and district-level supervision system of policy-based housing is set up in Beijing. Based on the random routine inspection and proper special inspection, multiple measures are taken, for example, quarterly quality and safety management competitions, quarterly briefing conferences, coordination meetings, as well as observation and exchange meetings. Multi-level administrative and law enforcement methods are used, like rectification and reform in a limited time, putting cases on file for penalty, giving scores to law and regulation violations of enterprises and staff. All of these are to strengthen the supervision management of the quality of affordable housing project and form a 2-layer supervision from the city and districts.
It is introduced that it will further give the public’s opinion full attention to achieve the perfect supervision mechanism and plan to carry out important new measures for affordable house supervision in Beijing in the future. Firstly, activities of quality inspection by house owners will be held. After the household quality acceptance, the construction units should inform house owners and organize them to inspect the house at a given time. The construction units should also answer the quality questions by house owners over the process and actively rectify them. Secondly, a sampling test mechanism by a third party will be established. After completing the project’s main structure, the construction units should entrust a qualified test institution to make a test sample regarding the solidity of the project’s structure. Thirdly, service awareness will be further enhanced. Before the completion and delivery of affordable houses, the construction units should organize and formulate detailed delivery plan to have house owners handle the delivery procedures. As for various quality defects put forward by house owners during the delivery, construction units should make full rectification and remove all quality problems before delivery. Fourthly, the service consciousness after delivery will also be raised. Construction units should set up special repair and maintenance office in construction sites and should be equipped with high quality maintenance staffs and constructors depending on the scale of the project; they should give notice to related procedures and follow them.
A responsible person from Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development says that he has hoped to actually establish a benign interaction among parties via the activity of “Open Day in Construction Site”, form a new situation where common people are involved, have all construction parties pay complete attention to their work in order to guarantee the increasing quality of affordable houses, thus providing satisfactory and secure houses for low- and medium-income families. Recently, the inspection groups led by leaders of Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and Sui Zhenjiang, Commission Director, respectively conducted fire safety inspection of key construction projects and residential communities. The construction projects involved underground tunnels of Hanyuanzi Station of No. 6 Daxing Subway Line section, the International Trade Center Phase III project in Chaoyang District, etc. The residential communities included common basements, old courtyard dwellings, as well as the construction site of affordable housing of Fulin Homeland Community in Dingfuzhuang in Chaoyang District. Previously, the Commission issued the Circular on Strengthening Fire Safety Management at Construction Sites and Eliminating Fire Risks and the Emergency Circular on Carrying out Major Fire Safety Examination on Public Basements and Other Crowded Places. This is done in order to implement an overall fire safety examination of the city's construction projects, common basements and old residential regions.
When examining the No. 6 Daxing Subway Line section and the International Trade Center Phase III project, Sui Zhenjiang stated that the city's construction sites were gradually returning to normal. So, all units shall effectively carry out fire safety duties, take effective measures according to the characteristics of the construction sites, and strengthen control over risk sources. It also shall prevent major fire accidents, especially fire accidents involving multiple deaths and injuries, ensure and safeguard the man power, materials, and financial resources on fire safety, fully implement protection and fire safety responsibilities at all levels, and earnestly implement the protection and fire safety measures at the construction sites.
The two circulars previously issued have made provisions on specific requirements for the construction sites and housing fire safety protection. It also stipulates that the responsible units are to implement overall safety examination. With regards to fire safety at the construction sites, the circulars require to focus on 1)monitoring the fire safety management in working areas, living areas, storage areas and other key parts; 2)allocating fire-fighting equipment and facilities in a reasonable and efficient manner; 3)carrying out on-site fire safety education and training, 4)especially enhancing the training of construction staff newly appointed after the festival and let them master the use of fire equipment and facilities, fire-fighting, rescue and evacuation; 5)implementing strict flare approval system, providing specialized flare guardian and fire-fighting equipment, and carrying out on-site monitoring; 6)being strict with architectural decoration of the construction sites; 7)establishing sound fire management rules and regulations, implementing strict liability management objectives, and implementing target responsibilities to every level and every officer; 8)making sure to clear flammable combustible materials, and take quarantine measures before any open flame operation; 9)strictly prohibiting smoking at the construction sites; and 10)strictly prohibiting the use of construction in progress sign as a way to have a dormitory. With regards to high-rise building construction, the circulars especially emphasize on strict assurance of available temporary fire-fighting water for high-rise buildings. In addition, the circulars also made it clear on how to strengthen the temporary power management during constructions.
In the aspect of fire safety of common basements and other crowded places, the circulars require that the underground space property owners, users or entrusted units are the main bodies of performing the responsibilities of safety and prevention. They should also be the direct persons responsible for implementing related laws and regulations on safety management of underground spaces, for remediation of potential safety problems, for ensuring safe use and compliance with standards, and being the first contact responsible for underground safety. The legal representatives of related units in the city and the persons in charge of unincorporated business entities shall further enhance the sense of responsibility as the main body and urge their own units to effectively assume responsibility for the safe use of the underground space in accordance with the laws and regulations. The property right management units or entrusted management units shall implement self-inspection over the fire safety of common basements they manage. The construction commission (housing bureaus) of each district and county shall immediately organize overall examination of fire safety risks in shopping malls (markets), entertainment places, hotels, residential premises, and other crowded places. They shall also strictly and severely deal with misconducts and illegal behaviors, such as insufficient security entrances and exits, blockage of security entrances, security exits and fire exits, unavailability of fire fighting facilities, emergency lighting and evacuation signs that do not meet the requirements, illegal use of fire and power, failure to implement the position based responsibility system all levels. The common basements closed and suspended during the Olympic Games cannot be restored if they fail to satisfy the related requirements. The common basements and other crowded places with incomplete official forms shall also stop the use in accordance with the law.
In accordance with the requirements of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the construction commission of each district and county and the construction corporations shall take immediate actions to implement overall investigation into fire safety risks over the construction sites according to their respective administrative areas. For the moment, more than 1500 construction sites had been inspected in the city. The examination showed that in most sites, the fire safety systems and fire prevention measures can be implemented according to the requirements, but fire safety problems still exist in some individual sites. The problems are mainly those that have made untimely clean-up of combustibles at construction sites, blocked fire exits, and so on. To solve these problems, the Commission has urged the construction units to implement rectifications. Most of districts and counties have held the meetings on basement management in streets, towns. During these meetings, the principle of territorial management has been followed in accordance with the relevant documents and the common basements in the administrative areas have been incorporated into the scope of management. The inspection system within the administrative region has established for the safe use of underground space, and a thorough investigation which lasted for a month has been started on the use and management of underground space.
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