On the morning of November 2, 2022 at the headquarters of the State Audit Office, the conference “Implementation and solutions to improve the quality of project audit in the form of EPC contract” under the maintenance of Ms. Ha Thi My Dung, Deputy General of State Auditor and Mr. Tran Kim Loc, Director of the Institute of Auditing and Training.

At the conference , presentations and discussions were presented by units under the State Audit; economic expert; Representatives of the Ministry of Transport, the Academy of Finance, the Vietnam Engineering Consultants Association (President and General Secretary ), the Vietnam Federation of Civil Engineering Associations pointed out the positive results and some disadvantages of the EPC contract, give some solutions and recommendations to improve the effectiveness of this form of contract.

Speech of opening, Deputy General of State Auditor Ha Thi My Dung assessed that currently, the implementation of investment projects in the form of EPC contracts has been implemented in many projects, especially those with high requirements on high technology. Construction investment projects in the form of EPC contracts bring many benefits to society, contractors and investors, allowing to take advantage of the contractor’s technical qualifications and management experience when implementing projects and packages. contractor. However, in fact, the management of investment projects in the form of EPC contracts is still inadequate, relevant mechanisms and policies are not specific or overlapping, making the implementation of EPC contracts difficult. However, domestic investors do not have much experience, many projects are behind schedule, and technology is outdated, so investment projects in the form of EPC have not been able to promote the inherent benefits of this form. In addition, the lack of close inspection and supervision by independent inspection agencies also significantly affects the efficiency of these projects.

With the discussion of the Vietnam Engineering Consultant Association, President Nguyen Thi Duyen said that with the current regulations of construction legal documents , EPC contract and EPC general contractor contract are different in size, the scope of work and responsibilities for construction management and supervision of the investor and the contractor. However, detailed and specific regulations do not represent different requirements for EPC contracts or EPC general contractor contracts. Not only that, many legal documents on bidding, finance, and project management do not even appear the phrase “EPC general contractor”.

In fact, many projects in Vietnam use FIDIC’s turnkey contract form to apply to EPC/EPC general contractor contracts. Therefore, when applying model construction contracts, the parties must consider and adjust the contract content to be consistent with the provisions of Vietnamese law. The problem is that in legal documents, there are always the same provisions as: For construction contracts of projects using official development assistance (ODA), if an international treaty to which Vietnam is a member, If a member has provisions different from those in this Law/Decree, it shall comply with the provisions of that international treaty. However, to what extent the provisions of the signed agreement when applying the international contract model such as the FIDIC contract should be considered to guide investors when preparing and issuing bidding documents, limiting the Inadequacies leading to contract disputes during implementation.

VECAS also highly appreciated the role of the State Auditor and suggested the State Auditor to coordinate with state management agencies in construction and bidding to study the opinions at the conference today, the recommendations of the investor, the contractor implementing the project in the form of EPC general contractor in order to improve the mechanisms and policies, create favorable conditions for the project, but also strengthen the discipline, improve the efficiency of the project experience for domestic actors involved in project implementation.

Photo source: State Audit