"Filtering Out 'Paper Safety': Strengthening Substance in Public Housing Safety Evaluations"

The system for evaluating construction safety will be improved so that it has a tangible impact on entry into the public housing market. The core of these reforms is to ensure that only companies deemed genuinely safe on-site, rather than just appearing safe on paper, can enter the public housing market.

On January 5, the Public Procurement Service announced that it will revise and implement the "Public Procurement Service's Public Housing Construction Execution Standards" with this intention. These standards include the pre-qualification criteria for public housing bidders, the detailed assessment criteria for the comprehensive evaluation bidding system for public housing construction contracts, and the detailed criteria for public housing eligibility assessments.

Provided by Public Procurement Service

The revision focuses on strengthening the impact of construction safety evaluations on the selection of contractors by increasing penalty points for companies involved in serious accidents from the bidding and contract stages, and awarding additional points to companies with excellent safety management.

First, to enhance safety evaluations, the Public Procurement Service will convert the construction safety scoring item, previously operated as a pilot program, into a regular system. In addition, new criteria will be introduced to deduct points (up to -5 points) for companies with fatalities from serious accidents and to award bonus points (up to 1 point) to companies recognized for outstanding safety practices.

The evaluation system has also been improved to enhance the effectiveness of construction safety assessments in both the general comprehensive evaluation system (for projects estimated at 30 billion won or more) and the simplified comprehensive evaluation system (for projects estimated between 10 billion and 30 billion won).

Previously, the construction safety evaluation was conducted under the "social responsibility" item, with bonus or penalty points (general: ±1.2 points, simplified: ±1.0 points). This has now been converted to a construction capability scoring item, with the maximum score raised to 2 points, so that the level of construction safety management is more directly reflected in the selection of contractors.

In addition, new criteria have been introduced to deduct points for fatalities from serious accidents and to award bonus points for safety and health management system certification, thereby strengthening the principle of reward and punishment based on the occurrence of serious accidents in both the general and simplified comprehensive evaluation systems. The penalty for serious accidents will apply to cases where a fatality occurs due to a violation of the Occupational Safety and Health Act from January 5 onward.

To support the safety investment environment for small and medium-sized construction companies, the minimum bid award rate for projects subject to eligibility assessment has been raised by 2 percentage points. The minimum bid award rate refers to the minimum percentage at which a bid can be awarded in the price evaluation, assuming full marks are received in other evaluation criteria (such as construction experience and financial status).

The Public Procurement Service expects that with these revised execution standards, companies involved in multiple fatalities from serious accidents will, in effect, be excluded from winning contracts.

Through these changes, the agency aims to create a public procurement environment in which "safety is competitiveness" across all public construction projects, including public housing, and to further strengthen the institutional foundation for preventing serious accidents.

Baek Seungbo, Commissioner of the Public Procurement Service, stated, "The revision of the execution standards is focused on decisively filtering out companies that are only 'safe on paper' and ensuring that safety management capabilities are properly evaluated from the bidding stage. We hope that, as a result, more companies that are truly responsible for safety will participate, so that tragic accidents no longer occur at construction sites."