[4] DESIGN PHASES BY VIETNAMESE LAW AND DESIGN PHASES BY COMMON REGULATION – MISUNDERSTANDING?

This article is probably as helpful to colleagues as it is to customers or people outside the industry. The main reason for this is probably because there are differences in a country's laws compared to the general regulations. This is understandable because many laws have been updated and matched with those from outside, while others have not been. For colleagues who either work in government offices or often work on public-investment-projects, they might not follow the general regulation of the concept of "Design Phases ". For other people working according to the general format "Design Phase" will often be confused or misunderstand the law on "Classification of projects according to 1-phase design, project, 2-phase design project and 3-phase design project" prescribed by Vietnam Construction Law when they need to submit an application for a stamp. The basic differences and misunderstanding are presented in the next two sections:

1 - TWO DIFFERENT FORMATS

a.  PHASES OF DESIGN ACCORDING TO GENERAL REGULATION

In a recent article we stated that, according to the general definition now, there are 6 or 7 phases. (Please refer to the article "Design Phases")

1. Tiền Thiết Kế | Pre-Design

2. Thiết Kế Sơ Bộ | Schematic Design

3. Thúc Tiến Thiết Kế | Design Development

/.  Hồ Sơ Cấp Phép | Building Permitting 

(considered a design phase or not)

4. Thiết Kế Chi Tiết (hay Thiết Kế Bản Vẽ Thi Công) | Construction Documents (or Construction Drawing Design)

5. Thương Thảo Quyết Định Nhà Thầu | Bidding & Negotiation

6. Quản Lý Công Trường | Construction Administration

b.  DESIGN PHASES ACCORDING TO VIETNAMESE LEGAL REGULATIONS

There are 4 phases:

1. Schematic Design

2. Identified Design

3. Technical Design

4. Construction Documents (or Construction Drawing Design)

So compared to general regulations, there are 2 basic differences:

- The number of phase for design does not include three phases which are Pre-Design Bidding - Negotiation and Construction Administration, however, are purely design jobs. Nevertheless, this is a long-standing regulation, hopefully in the near future this regulation will be upgraded and amended to make it easier to understand.

- There is one more stage after Identifed Design which is Technical Design. But actually, according to the writer's experience, the Identifed Design phase, also known as Design Development, if is organized in good architectural offices, is already very thorough. So this Technical Design phase actually is usually only to be applied to large projects that require many steps to go through the law, this phase can be considered as Identified Design 2, for example. This means that, it is a legal regulation when performing the phases to submit documents and to get approval. However, internally in the design office, there is no need to create this phase.

* Note:

The word “Bước” in Vietnamese is often translated into English as “Step”. Accordingly, "Steps of Design" in Vietnamese means "Phases of Design", however, when translating into English, please don't use "Step", but "Phase" instead.

So:

 “Bước” = “Giai đoạn” = Step = Stage = Phase (common used)

2 - THE CONFLICT ABOUT THE NUMBER OF PHASES IN A PROJECT

In Vietnam, there are a regulation on projects based on the number of phases in the application process, which can easily cause confusion for both Vietnamese people as well as foreign workers working in Vietnam. This regulation in the past was mainly related to public investment projects, because in the past, there were few private projects related to this law. Private projects were usually only houses, restaurants, and hotels, and were less affected. But now many large projects are private projects, so it is easy to cause confusion and misunderstanding.

According to this regulation, there are concepts of project types as follows:

 

• 1-design-phase project: Construction Documents

• 2-design-phase project: Indentified Design (Design Development) and Construction Documents

• 3-design-phase project: Indentified Design, Technical Design and Construction Documents

 

The basic difference that makes confused is, the number of phases in the regulations is the number of phases of design minus 1, meaning the Schematic Design phase is not included. If the word "phase" in this case were replaced with the word "document set", it might be easier to understand. For example, an “1-documen set design project” is a project where you only have to submit 1 type of design document for approval, which is the Construction Documents. Similar to the remaining cases.

If you are doing design work, you always follow the general design phase (from 1 to 6 in part 1), then you have to look up some information related to the law to perform the work, for example preparing documents for verification, preparing documents for licensing and approval, then you know this regulation, you will probably very confused and wonder "Oh, I can't see another phase, that Schematic Design, why is it like this?”

The writer himself hopes that this law will be updated and amended in the near future, and this will help us as well as others involved in design and construction projects, including our colleagues – consultanting party, customers and other parties.

----------

- MODS -

--- 

(Bài viết đúc kết từ các nguồn tài liệu khác nhau và từ kinh nghiệm của người viết - The article originates from different sources and from the writer's experience.)