Comprehensive Plan to Improve Construction Quality

The Ministry of Roads and Urban Development is devising an overarching plan to improve the quality of buildings and residential units nationwide, a senior official with the ministry announced.

“We are drafting a comprehensive plan to improve the quality of constructions because while the buildings that are being constructed today boast a better quality than before, they are still below our standards,” Mohammad Shokrchizadeh also told Fars News Agency.

According to the official, who heads the ministry’s research center, a coalition of construction, legal, fire, insurance and social committees is working to devise the plan and using international experience in the construction of new buildings.

“In developed countries, various services offered by the insurance industry are used to improve the quality of construction,” he said, adding that the comprehensive plan is focused on employing the full potential of the Iranian insurance industry.

Shokrchizadeh stressed the necessity of paying attention to fire regulations, pointing to a directive last year which obligated buildings to obtain a license confirming that their exteriors are fire resistant.

“Unfortunately, we still see that a number of construction projects are in no way conformant to fire regulations and that is why it was decreed that as of last year, the façade of buildings must receive the permit of MRUD’s research center,” he said.

Preventing fires in buildings and conformity to fire regulations gained national attention after the Plasco building, a decades-old commercial high-rise in downtown Tehran, was engulfed in a massive blaze and collapsed, claiming dozens of lives.

Asked whether the buildings built as part of the Mehr Housing Project possess the necessary quality, Shokrchizadeh said the project was launched by the former administration when public housing was a priority.

“At that time, not much attention was paid to quality so in a number of residential units constructed under the Mehr Housing Project, quality has been compromised,” he concluded.