Development of the National System of Assessment and Certification of Infrastructure

COUNTRY | Russia

REGION | Europe

SECTOR | all sectors

QII Principles | Principle 1: Sustainable Growth & Development, Principle 2: Economic Efficiency, Principle 3: Environmental Considerations, Principle 4: Building Resilience, Principle 5: Social Considerations, Principle 6: Infrastructure Governance

QII Sub-Principles | 1: SDGs, 1: Paris Agreement, 1: Wider economic benefits, 2: Value for money analysis, 2: Life-cycle costing, 2: Operation and maintenance, 2: Technological innovation, 2: Risk management, 3: Environmental Impact Assessment, 3: Environmental Impact Mitigation, 3: Disclosure of environmental aspects, 3: Ecosystems, 3: Biodiversity, 3: Climate, 3: Weather, 3: Emissions, 4: Resilience, 4: Disaster risk management, 5: Social Impact Assessment, 5: Job creation, 5: Capacity and institutional building, 5: Gender, 5: Occupational health and safety, 5: Universal access to services, 5: Social inclusiveness, 5: Disability, 5: Low-income groups, 5: Children, 5: Displaced communities, 5: Indigenous groups, 5: Elderly, 5: Vulnerable environments, 5: Marginalised groups, 6: Growth & development strategies, 6: Procurement transparency, 6: Financial & debt sustainability, 6: Access to information and data, 6: Institutional Framework of infrastructure investment, 6: Transparency of infrastructure investment, 6: Enabling Environment

Overview

Parties involved (public and private):

• State Development Corporation VEB.RF
• National PPP Development Centre
• AECOM
  with support of the Russian Ministry of Finance

The Certification System’s development brings together a wide range of experts including representatives of international financial, expert and civil organisations and associations such as the World Bank, the OECD and the World Wide Fund for Nature, consulting companies, leading infrastructure investors, executive authorities and other stakeholders.
Aim(s) of the project: Development of a Russian system of assessment and certification of infrastructure projects in line with best international practices and foreign investors‚Äô requirements to increase the number of QII projects and to mobilise private investment in infrastructure.

Relevance to QII

The Methodology's project assessment areas and criteria meet, explain or complement the Principles for Quality Infrastructure Investment (QII) endorsed by G20 leaders in 2019.

Benefits

Highlights

1. Comprehensive quality assessment for infrastructure projects.
2. Early detection of project disadvantages and risks at the initial stage with further mitigation through the project comprehensive management system.
3. Attracting private and institutional investments in infrastructure projects on preferential terms.
4. Easy access to long-term and easy-term financing and reducing total financing costs.
5. Design and development of infrastructure meeting the requirements of tomorrow.
6. Tools for project online self-assessment.
7. Improvement of project teams' qualifications through ad hoc training programmes.
8. Opportunity to get a benchmark project status and to be listed in best practices.
9. Recommendations for projects to enhance their quality and compliance with sustainability principles.
10. Encouragement of projects and teams going beyond minimal requisite process, legal, environmental norms to achieve the best investment projects implementation indicators.

Expected and realised benefits

1. Certification is a voluntary tool to enhance the quality of infrastructure and remains at the discretion of the project initiator.
2. The project may choose two assessment tracks: self-assessment or assessment by an accredited assessor.
3. The assessment is based on independent verification of actual data and documentary evidence which enables publishing of assessment results (only the assessment results will be published, not the documentary evidence).
4. Acknowledgement of the assessment results by international organisations and institutional investors.
5. The Certification System sets an agenda for long-term sustainable infrastructure development in line with sustainability and QII principles.

Metrics

The success is measured upon the quantity of new infrastructure projects, that have been certified as “quality”

Name of Institute

State corporation of development VEB.RF (Russia)