When purchasing industrially manufactured buildings, a building passport will be used instead of a full construction design project, eliminating the need to prepare a detailed building project. This will allow savings of up to 70% on design costs and significantly speed up the approval process.

This solution is provided by amendments to Cabinet Regulation No. 529 "Building Regulations" (ĒBN) of 2 September 2014, promoted by the Ministry of Economics (MoE) and adopted by the government on Tuesday, 29 April.

The purpose of the draft regulation is to ensure that industrially manufactured buildings are offered on the market with a documentation package equivalent to a construction project, allowing the buyer to verify the building’s compliance with construction regulatory requirements. At the same time, bureaucracy is reduced by providing that documents prepared during the manufacturing process will serve as the design documentation.

"The developed amendments are an important step towards simplifying administrative construction processes. In the case of standardized residential houses, it is unnecessary to require each buyer to obtain the same documentation. This regulation will promote broader use of industrially manufactured buildings while enhancing their quality," stated the Minister of Economics, Viktors Valainis.

Currently, regulations allow the use of buildings as ready-made construction products; however, the regulatory framework is very general and does not specify the required content of technical documentation for industrially manufactured buildings. Consequently, when purchasing such a building, the buyer cannot verify whether it meets the essential construction requirements – including mechanical strength and stability, fire safety, sound insulation, usability safety, environmental accessibility, and energy efficiency.

Going forward, a certified construction specialist in the relevant design field must prepare a technical passport for each industrially manufactured building. This technical passport will be prepared before the building is marketed, providing buyers with necessary information about the building’s compliance with construction regulatory requirements. It will also be used instead of a building project when submitting documentation to the building authority for approval. Only a general site plan and building foundation solutions – specific to the particular location – will need to be prepared additionally.

At the 29 April government meeting, the Ministry of Economics also presented an informational report, “Unified Registration of Buildings in the BIS, Cadastre, and Land Register.” The report outlines the model for a unified building registration process, the competencies of each involved institution, digital solutions, the functionality of national information systems under development, as well as the necessary actions and processes to implement unified registration of construction and real estate – from the initiation of a construction idea to the registration of the building in the Land Register. This task for the Ministry of Economics and the Ministry of Justice is included in the Government Action Plan, emphasizing that data should primarily be obtained through information system data exchange. This will allow for a conceptual change in the building registration process, moving away from redundant field data collection through building inventories and registering data based on construction-acquired information.

Ministry of Economics
Public Relations Department
Email: prese@em.gov.lv