Suwon Selected as 'Grand Prize' in Gyeonggi Province's 2020 Architectural Administration Evaluation

[Suwon Ilbo=Park No-hoon] Gyeonggi Province announced on the 29th that it had selected Suwon City, which has been operating architectural administration excellently, as the 'Grand Prize' winner in the 2020 Architectural Administration Soundness Evaluation.

The 'Architectural Administration Soundness Evaluation' is an annual assessment system that evaluates overall architectural administration across all 31 cities and counties in Gyeonggi Province, including the province's key policies, municipal and county self-directed plans, and architectural administration practices, in accordance with the Building Act.

The province combined quantitative and qualitative evaluation indices to select Suwon City for the grand prize, Pyeongtaek City for the highest honor award, and Bucheon, Hanam, and Yongin cities for the excellence award as outstanding organizations.

According to the evaluation results, the five local governments selected as outstanding organizations will be presented with institutional commendations and awards for meritorious civil servants, while architects will receive awards from the Gyeonggi Province Governor.

Suwon City, selected as the grand prize winner, received excellent evaluations in ▲promoting architectural administration soundness at municipal and county levels ▲promoting system improvements and excellent policies ▲promoting fire safety performance reinforcement for existing buildings ▲architectural policies such as safety inspections of buildings under construction ▲shortening processing time for building permits and approvals ▲shortening processing time for architectural-related petitions and complaints ▲post-inspection of buildings subject to on-site inspections.

In addition, 10 policies promoted by 8 cities and counties were selected for excellent architectural policies, including ▲Seongnam City's 'Support Project for Green Building Creation (Private Buildings)' ▲Gimpo City's 'Pre-notification System for Building Permits (Applications)' ▲Paju City's 'Expansion of Barrier-Free Living Environments for Private Buildings' ▲Anyang City's 'CCTV Installation for Building Construction Site Monitoring'.

Seongnam City's green building creation support project aims to improve energy performance of aged houses and provide comfortable residential environments. The project supports up to 50% of total construction costs (maximum 10 million won) for internal and external insulation work on aged houses, window replacement, and replacement with excellent low-standby-power products.

The province plans to continuously recommend cities and counties to introduce major policy projects promoted by the province, including securing rest facilities for vulnerable workers such as cleaning staff and installing electric vehicle charging facilities, and will reflect the implementation status in next year's evaluation.

Hong Ji-seon, Director of Urban and Housing at Gyeonggi Province, stated, "The Architectural Administration Soundness Evaluation will not end with just the evaluation itself. We will continue to discover and share architectural administration tailored to local characteristics so that the province and cities and counties can work actively together to contribute to improving residents' quality of life."