Innovative measures speed up construction project approvals

The administrative services center in the Lin'gang district of Weihai city – located in East China's Shandong province – recently rolled out a range of innovative measures designed to speed up the approvals process for high-end food processing projects.

Going places: An aerial view of the Lin-gang district. [Photo by Yang Yan for chinadaily.com.cn]

One of the initiatives is the so-called "nine certificates in one" reform, which consolidates various documents into a single permit, significantly reducing the approval time.

According to Li Dongmei, project manager of Weihai Dongwang Food Co Ltd, the company received its construction permit for a food processing plant one week earlier than expected.

Additionally, Lin'gang is now using a special fast-track approvals mode, where the authorities leverage the 30-day public notice and listing period for land auctions to simultaneously conduct planning announcements and land listings, to accelerate project starts.

The district has also introduced a staged approvals policy, allowing projects to obtain construction permits at separate stages. With the permit, some complex engineering projects can initiate tasks such as site leveling and excavation in advance, so as to speed things up.

As a result of the initiatives, the approval time for 84 important projects was reduced by more than 70 percent, saving project teams over 600 working days.

Moving forwards, plans are for Lin'gang to improve the engineering approvals system, improve its business environment and strengthen collaboration between departments, to further improve the efficiency of construction project approvals. (Edited by Zhou Yunlai)