In the context of proposals to remove the mandatory fire authority acceptance inspection — replacing it with direct legal liability for the project owner — an investor's perspective published on VnExpress raised a key question: accepting liability is a given, but fire safety is a highly specialised technical field that most investors are not equipped to assess independently. The article argued that a clear framework for professional liability of fire safety consultants, designers, contractors and inspectors is therefore essential. This article summarises that argument and adds the perspective of VIETSAFE E&C from consulting practice.
1. The proposal: remove the authority acceptance inspection, impose direct owner liability
The VnExpress article described a regulatory proposal to abolish the mandatory fire authority acceptance inspection of completed fire safety systems. Under this proposal, the project owner would bear full legal responsibility for the facility's fire safety compliance — rather than waiting for step-by-step confirmation from the fire authority as under the previous model. This is consistent with the broader post-inspection direction established by Fire Safety Law 55/2024 and Decree 105/2025, which VIETSAFE E&C has discussed in our article on fire safety compliance procedures.
2. The investor's argument: responsibility must be matched by capability
The author — writing as an investor — agreed that legal responsibility for one's own business activities is a matter of course. However, the article argued that an equally important condition is a transparent, enabling legal environment in which investors can commit capital with confidence.
The article noted that most investors bring capital, business judgement and commercial experience — accepting financial risk is already their primary responsibility. Fire safety, by contrast, is a deeply specialised technical field requiring engineering knowledge and technical standards that most investors are not equipped to evaluate independently.
On this basis, the article called for a legal mechanism that clearly assigns professional liability to fire safety consultants, designers, contractors and inspectors for their respective scopes of work. When a project owner has engaged a qualified specialist firm and properly authorised it to carry out its scope, legal liability should be distributed in proportion to each party's responsibility — rather than being concentrated entirely on the owner.
3. VIETSAFE E&C's perspective
The model in which "the project owner bears legal responsibility to the law, while each specialist firm bears professional liability for its scope" is precisely the framework that Fire Safety Law 55/2024 is moving towards. In practice, this is also how an independent fire safety consultant already operates: preparing a technically rigorous dossier — with calculations, specifications, and equivalency analyses under QCVN and international standards — so that when the fire authority, an insurer, or a court reviews it, the dossier can "speak for itself."
If the proposal to remove the acceptance inspection is enacted, the role of the fire safety design consultant is likely to increase in importance, not diminish. The dossier prepared by the consultant becomes the primary instrument by which the project owner defends its compliance position — making the technical quality and completeness of that dossier more consequential than ever.
4. Practical implications for project owners
| Under old model | Under post-inspection model |
|---|---|
| Fire authority validates each step — errors may be caught during approval | No authority validation before operation — errors only surface at inspection or after an incident |
| Approval certificate provides a degree of protection | The dossier is the only defence — quality and completeness are critical |
| Liability distributed between authority (approval) and owner (construction) | Liability sits with owner and appointed specialists — professional liability framework is essential |
| Long approval timelines built into project schedule | No approval wait — but dossier preparation discipline must be maintained throughout design and construction |
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