The government has adopted a resolution that significantly corrects most of the acts related to the regulation of construction. Document No. 226 dated May 15, 2025, published on June 5, came into force on June 6, 2025.

Just the list of provisions previously approved by resolutions of the Council of Ministers, to which significant changes have been made, inspires awe. About 30 provisions were significantly revised, about 50 normative legal acts or their individual provisions were declared invalid, new Regulations were approved on the procedure for making decisions on permitting the placement of objects on the provided site with a deviation from the approved urban planning project of detailed planning and the scope of work, without which residential buildings can be put into operation.

Subjectivelist of the main amended provisions affecting a wide range of stakeholders:

Rules for concluding and executing construction contracts;
On the procedure for forming a fixed contractual price for construction, special, installation, and commissioning works;
On the procedure for sending notifications about the execution of construction and installation work;
On the procedure for making decisions on unauthorized buildings;
Rules for concluding and executing contract agreements for design and survey work and (or) design supervision;
On the procedure for development, coordination and approval of urban planning projects, design documentation;
On the procedure for conducting public discussions in the field of architectural, urban planning and construction activities.

All documents not mentioned are also important, but listing them would exceed the reasonable length of this post.

What can we pay attention to?

1) Thus, Resolution of the Council of Ministers 1387, which has existed to this day with a name indicating permits for construction and installation work, long abolished, has finally been updated and now indicates situations in which notifications about the start of construction and installation work are not sent, including in the cases specified in Decree No. 46 on simplified construction.

2) The regulations on the procedure for making decisions on unauthorized buildings have been amended to provide for the approval of the act of acceptance for operation of an object, the construction of which was carried out without permission, after the executive committee has made a decision on legalization. The act will be drawn up in the form established by the Ministry of Architecture and Construction, and will most likely be required for state registration of the object. Previously, the decision of the executive committee was sufficient for registration.

3) Concluding the disputes about the need to apply the Regulations on the procedure for accepting construction projects into operation and on certain issues of certification of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs, managers, specialists of organizations and individual entrepreneurs operating in the field of construction, taking into account the removal by the Code of Architectural, Urban Planning and Construction Activities of the right to regulate these issues from the competence of the Council of Ministers, they were declared invalid.

4) An approximate form of a contract for carrying out design and survey work and (or) conducting architectural supervision has been approved (approximate, i.e. one that can be used as a basis for negotiations or concluding a deal, unlike the standard one, its terms can be adjusted depending on wishes). The form contains a large number of fairly advanced conditions, which are often not found in primitive samples downloaded from the Internet, although there are certain flaws (for example, the wording “The Contractor has the right to terminate this agreement unilaterally”). The form, as well as other provisions, takes into account the renaming of the usual “Design Assignment” to “Assignment for the development of design documentation”. The form does not regulate such an important issue as property rights to the work, stipulating only the purpose of using design documentation - the construction of an object, and the contractor’s obligation to guarantee the Customer that third parties do not have the right to prevent the execution of work or limit their execution on the basis of the documentation prepared by the contractor. By the way, we advise you to note that other provisions of Resolution 226 are not provided for the possibility of further use of estimates in the CIC format, which can also be provided for in the contract.

We recommend that you revise the approximate form before using it.

5) Speaking about the new edition of the construction contract rules, I would like to note that they show the legislator’s desire for greater unification of the rules for concluding contracts with general procurement rules, increasing financial certainty (due to the mandatory fixed price - words about the possibility of establishing a method for determining the price in the contract are excluded) and detailing the rights and obligations of the parties in accordance with modern requirements, including the use of electronic documents.

At the same time, in our opinion, some key changes seem more beneficial for the contractor compared to the previous edition. For example:

a) The responsibility for providing design documentation rests with the customer. Now the customer is obliged to transfer to the contractor the already approved design documentation that has passed the state construction examination, and if changes are made to it, the customer is obliged to obtain a positive expert opinion and adjust the unchanged contract price, as well as the construction time;

b) Cases of adjustment of a constant price have been expanded and specified. Now this will happen, among other things, due to deficiencies in the design documentation or delays depending on the customer (for example, violation of the payment procedure, payment schedule, identification of additional work, change in the start date of work or suspension of construction for reasons depending on the customer), as well as in the event of clarification of circumstances that could not be foreseen during its development;

c) For contracts concluded as a result of procurement procedures, the payment of current advances is provided for as mandatory, unless the contractor in his proposal explicitly agreed to carry out the work without them;

d) If the contractor sent a message to the customer about additional work entailing an increase in the price of the work, and did not receive a response from him within 10 calendar days (or another period under the contract), the contractor has the right to suspend work and attribute losses caused by downtime to the customer’s account.

Author: Maxim Lashkevich,

Partner, Head of Construction and Real Estate Practice

GRATA International, Belarus

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