Changes of brief almost always arrive halfway through execution, because something was found on site. Article 293 of the Codul urbanismului gives them a route of their own, the autorizație de modificare or modification permit; what the authorisation file contains is on the PAC page.
The article has three exits, differing enormously in effort, and the choice between them is made on site, under pressure.
Three exits, and the question that separates them
A site instruction, paragraph (8): local changes to technical solutions, with no new permit, provided the instruction is drawn up in advance by the designer. A modification permit, paragraphs (4) and (5): granted if the change falls within the limits of the avize already issued, of the environmental instrument where applicable, and of the urbanism provisions, on an updated authorisation design. Starting over, paragraph (6): if it does not fall within those limits, the process restarts under article 249 and no modification permit can be issued.
The rest is our reading.
The question that separates the three exits is not how big the change is. It is whether the change stays inside what you already have approved. A visually minor change that steps outside one aviz’s condition sends you to paragraph (6). A visually major one that stays inside can go through paragraph (4).
That is not a distinction you can make from the drawing. You make it by rereading the conditions in every aviz issued, which means the answer to “do I need a new permit?” costs several hours of work before it exists.
The timing of the request is a condition, not a formality
Paragraph (2) requires the request to be submitted “anterior începerii realizării lucrărilor de modificare”, before the modification works begin. Paragraph (3) adds that a modification permit can only be sought while the building permit is still valid.
This is, to us, the riskiest detail in practice, because it collides with how modifications actually arise. They arise during execution, often because something was found on site, and the reflex is to carry on working and settle the paperwork afterwards. The text closes that reflex off: before, not during.
That same paragraph (3) contains a sentence worth reading twice: “data începerii lucrărilor fiind considerată data emiterii acesteia”, the date works begin being taken as the date of its issue. We read that as tying the start of the modification works to the date the modification permit is issued, but the wording does not make clear which of the two permits “acesteia” refers to. We give you our reading as a reading.
You do not get a new clock
Paragraph (7) says that issuing the modification permit ends the validity of the original permit for the modified elements, and that those works are carried out under the modification permit but within the original permit’s validity period.
The practical consequence: a modification eats into the old clock. Bring one late in the permit’s life and you pay for the updated design and keep the same expiry date, while extension is the subject of an ambiguity we set out in the piece on extensions.
What this means for the design contract
Three things, in our view, and all of them are negotiated at signing rather than when the problem appears.
Whoever decides that a change is “local” for the purposes of paragraph (8) is the designer, because they draw up the site instruction. That is a decision with legal consequences, taken under the pressure of execution, by someone with an obvious interest in not opening a new procedure.
Checking that a change falls within the avize, as paragraph (4) requires, is real and repetitive work. If the contract does not provide for it, it will either be billed separately or done superficially, and the second does not show until an inspection shows it.
And because paragraph (5) requires an updated design, signed under the conditions we set out in who signs the design, a modification brings the whole team back into play, not just the author of the change. Worth asking at the outset who signs the revision, and how quickly.
Where we expect practice to diverge
How broadly primării read “local changes to technical solutions”. It is the only fast valve in the article and, for that reason, the place where practice will differ most from one authority to the next, which we wrote about in what the code standardises. What qualifies as an intervention in the first place is in a change of use.
This article is analysis, not legal advice. The provisions cited are from Legea 169/2026, published in Monitorul Oficial no. 661 of 10 August 2026. Check your own situation with the issuing authority.