Updated 6.30pm with ministerial statement

Architects will be responsible for ensuring excavation and demolition works followed proper procedures under revisions to construction laws, Infrastructure Minister Ian Borg announced on Monday.

Dr Borg announced the contentious reform of the regulations governing excavation and demolition works at a press conference, saying the changes would come into force from Tuesday.

The main change, he said, would be the creation of site technical officers who would replace site managers.

To date, site managers had technically been responsible for ensuring works followed approved plans.

However, complaints have arisen that these were not warranted professionals, and could even be the contractors themselves with no technical expertise whatsoever.

Technical officers to replace site managers

Dr Borg said the new site technical officers would replace site managers and they would have to be warranted architects. They would have to be on site when works are ongoing.

However, they would not have to be the same architect that drafted the plans on the project, and could be appointed by the contractor.

“The word responsibility is at the centre of everything we are trying to achieve here and everyone needs to shoulder their own responsibility in this sector,” he said. 

The government, Dr Borg said, was shouldering its responsibility by legislating, “even if the reform is tough”.

This did not mean the government could satisfy everyone. In fact some might be unhappy with this added responsibility.

If some do not want to meet their obligations, they know what to do

“If an architect doesn’t want to do this, they can chose not to. But we will not allow a situation where developers are working on a site without the supervision of a warranted professional,” he said, later adding that this would not go down well with the Chamber of Architects who had already expressed concerns.

If there were “some” who did not want to meet their obligations, they knew what to do, he said pointedly.

Asked if he expected the Chamber of Architects to strike, as had been floated at a recent meeting of professionals, Dr Borg said the ball was in their court. The public, he said, wanted professionals to meet their responsibilities.

Writing on Facebook, former Chamber president Chris Mintoff said the new legal role of site managers was simply a smoke-screen for contractors' legal and moral obligations, and that the law would only invite more carelessness.

"That architects should become complicit in the carelessness of contractors and workers that he did not engage by baby-sitting them is a level of insanity I never thought possible," he said. "This law will bring only less peace of mind, security, and far more expenses."

'Radical changes'

The minister then went on to detail the “radical changes” when it came to method statements for excavation works, insisting the reform would not allow this document to be vague and unstructured as it was at present.

The new legal notice, which will be in Tuesday's Government Gazette, includes schedules that detail how the method statement should be drawn up.

This document was sent to the Building Regulations Office and simply filed away.

“We wanted the system to be more transparent. The current situation is not transparent at all,” he said.

The document will now be uploaded to the Planning Authority’s map server, meaning the public could now access this detailed document online.

A 15-day window will allow any concerned parties to appeal and give input on the works to be done and the methods to be used.

The reform will also map out the condition report, which is meant to detail the current state of the site and the neighbouring properties. This would also have to be drafted by a warranted architect.

All construction sites, Dr Borg said, would have to comply with the new rules once the legal notice was published tomorrow.

In closing, Dr Borg said the legal notice was just a small part of the reform that needed to be carried out to bring the industry up to scratch.

“This is not the entire reform. And I am making this statement in view of some who said this was being rushed,” he said.

Some, he added, may have preferred the government to remain silent following the incidents of building collapse.

The thriving construction industry has sparked a crisis.

'We could not keep waiting for accidents to happen'

Delivering a ministerial statement in Parliament later on Monday, Dr Borg said the changes were part of a long-term effort to reform legislation surrounding the construction industry which had started months earlier, he said, but had been sped up because the government could not stand by and watch accidents happen.

He clarified that project architects would not be prohibited from serving as site technical officers themselves. Rather, the new rules mandated that, were an architect to decide against taking on this responsibility himself, his delegate would have to be a warranted architect.

Opposition Leader Adrian Delia said that safety needed to come first in the construction sector, and that Malta needed to stop reacting to accidents and to start acting to prevent them.

The construction industry had developed at a very fast rate in recent years, and the government should have thought about a long-term vision to the development of the sector before instead of "waiting for accidents to happen", he added.

'All stakeholders must show will to change' - Chamber

The Chamber of Commerce said in a statement that the reform could only be successful if all stakeholders had the will to change and improve. 

“All along, the Chamber has advocated for the highest of standards in design, engineering, management and construction which must become the true objectives. This reform must be a holistic review of our regulatory and practices framework to truly modernise the industry and change the current situation” it said.

The Chamber also warned that the new authority that would be established to amalgamate the various fragmented agencies in the field, must strive to "regulate and enforce, educate and motivate" the industry and the public.

“The days of complacency should be long gone. We must not stop once the new authority has been established but we should all strive to ensure that Quality and Safety Targets are met. The Chamber of Commerce is willing to contribute to this process to ensure that this change truly happens," it said.