The German Property Federation (ZIA) considers the Infrastructure Future Act, recently passed by the Bundestag, to be a precedent for the modernisation and acceleration of building planning law. This assessment explicitly also applies to the fields of building construction and housing. According to the federation, the act demonstrates how planning and approval procedures can be made more efficient and digitised. These methods should be emphatically transferred to housing and building construction, as similar necessities exist there.
Iris Schöberl, President of the ZIA, emphasised the need to consistently apply the principle of overriding public interest. According to her, the prioritisation of infrastructure projects — such as rail, road or energy projects — must imply comparable relevance for housing construction. The current housing demand situation requires equal treatment in such considerations to enable and accelerate the construction of urgently needed housing units.
Digitisation and Process Acceleration
In particular, the complete digitisation of procedures envisaged in the Infrastructure Future Act is positively assessed by the ZIA. The mandatory electronic submission of documents, the digital participation of all stakeholders, and the “digital only” approach represent a significant step forward from the federation's perspective. These standards should be transferred without restrictions into general building planning law to ensure coherent and modern administration of all construction projects and to increase efficiency.
- —Binding deadlines for submitting comments and granting permits.
- —The targeted use of external project managers to support and accelerate procedures.
- —The possibility of implementing preparatory construction measures at an earlier stage.
Ms. Schöberl highlighted that early predictability is a fundamental factor for the faster and more reliable execution of construction processes. Regarding the recently initiated parliamentary procedure for the Building Code (BauGB) amendment, the ZIA sees an opportunity for targeted improvements in the draft bill. In this context, a binding deadline logic, consistent acceleration of processes, and legal equal treatment of preparatory measures are considered essential. The federation calls for the integration of the instruments enshrined in the Infrastructure Future Act into the further development of the Building Code (BauGB).
Another demand from the ZIA concerns the submission of the draft bill for Building Type E before the summer recess. The President of the ZIA emphasised in this context that a clear legal framework for simplified, serial and cost-efficient building construction can make a decisive contribution to reducing construction costs. Without this measure, significant potential for efficiency gains and cost reduction would remain untapped, which proves disadvantageous given the current market situation.
