You have the permit in hand. What happens between that moment and the first bucket of concrete is an area almost nobody asks about, and the code covers it in a single article with five letters.
The deadlines up to that point, from certificate to issue, are in the order of the steps. What follows begins after them.
What article 514 requires
Before the works begin, the developer ensures:
- notice to the competent public authorities of the date and hour the works start;
- notice to the county directorate for culture, if you are intervening on a listed historic monument;
- payment of the levies owed to the State Inspectorate for Construction;
- placing the investment identification board where it can be seen;
- preparing and permitting the site organisation project, if that was not done together with the building permit or if it cannot be carried out as authorised.
Point 5 has a permit of its own, described on the site organisation permit page.
Point 3 has an article of its own, because it is paid in two instalments: the inspectorate levy.
The notice goes to two places, not one
Article 278 paragraph (3) is explicit: the permit holder notifies both the authority that issued the permit and the inspectorate. Paragraph (4) accepts digital or written form.
Paragraph (5) adds something that did not exist before. Together with the notice, the holder, through the chosen specialist designer, uploads to the National Register of Constructions, electronically signed, the detailed design together with its verification reports, and the permit, approvals and consents obtained. The register thus enters the procedure on the first day of the site, not at the end. We wrote about the other register obligation in the technical book goes electronic.
The permit alone does not let you start
Paragraph (1) of the same article conditions the start on something other than the administrative act: works may begin only after the permits are issued and solely on the basis of a detailed design prepared and checked as the law requires, plus execution details where those are mandatory.
It is the distinction described in the permit project is not the build project, read from the other side: there it was about what you commission, here about what stops you starting.
The site is handed over on a report
Article 515 settles a classic source of dispute. The site and the levelling benchmarks are handed over by the client or developer, through the site supervisor, to the contractor, on a handover report. And conserving, and where necessary reinstating, the stakes and benchmarks handed over remains the contractor’s responsibility for as long as the site operates.
Who moved a benchmark and who puts it back stops being a discussion.
The two fixed fines
Failing to display the investment identification board and failing to announce the start date are both administrative offences, at article 357 paragraph (1) letters h) and j). The penalty is at paragraph (4) letter g) and is fixed: 2,000 lei, not a range.
One asymmetry is worth remembering. Paragraph (6) allows the offence at letter h), the board, to be punished with a warning instead, once, on a first breach. Letter j), failing to announce the start, is not on that list.
Who each notice goes to, at the start and at the end, is set out in the two înștiințări.
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.