Construction Organizations

in the USSR, production units having individual organizational frameworks and whose principal activities are the construction, renovation, major repair, and enlargement of existing enterprises or their separate production units, production units to be commissioned, buildings, and structures, as well as the installation of equipment.

State construction organizations include construction trusts (single-project, municipal, regional, and specialized all-Union trusts), housing-construction, factory-construction, and rural-construction combines, and construction and assembly-installation directorates and equivalent organizations, such as mobile, mechanized work brigades and construction trains.

Kolkhozes cooperate in creating interkolkhoz construction organizations (seeINTERKOLKHOZ ENTERPRISES).

Construction organizations may contract work out, or they may use their own building organization (direct labor method). With the contract method, the construction and production functions are undertaken by permanent organizations that operate on the basis of profit-and-loss accounting and perform work under contract for enterprises and customer oiganizations. With the direct labor method, construction work is performed directly by the builder’s construction organization for the builder’s own needs.

The volume of construction work for state and cooperative enterprises and organizations (excluding work done by kolkhozes) in 1974 amounted to 54.7 billion rubles, including contracted construction work, which amounted to 50.0 billion rubles.

Depending on the type of work performed, construction organizations are classified as general or specialized. The former carry out combinations of basic operations, such as assembly, installation, masonry work, concrete work, carpentry work, and other large-scale operations. Specialized construction organizations perform only one type of work or a group of related operations. Construction organizations are also classified according to the nature of their contractual relationships as general contracting or subcontracting.

The principal types of construction organizations are the construction and assembly-installation trusts and the housing-construction, factory-construction, and rural-construction combines. In 1974, 4 percent of the construction and assembly-installation trusts had an annual volume of work performed by their own forces worth up to 5 million rubles, 16 percent had a work volume worth 5 to 9 million rubles, 31 percent had a work volume worth 9 to 15 million rubles, and 49 percent had a work volume worth more than 15 million rubles.

Under a program of economic reform, the most important services are being centralized at the trust level. In many cases, construction directorates are freed from some economic functions, such as bookkeeping, planning, and concluding agreements. In practice, a trust is transformed from an administrative body into an organization directly responsible for performing construction work; that is, it becomes a primary organization.

The production framework of a construction organization depends on the composition and orientation of the subdivisions that perform the general construction and specialized tasks, prepare structural components and semifinished materials, and carry out the maintenance and repair of construction machinery.

The processes of concentration (in which organizations are made larger and fewer in number) and specialization in construction organizations have resulted in the separation of the divisions responsible for the maintenance and repair of heavy construction machines and equipment, vehicular and railroad transportation, production tooling, and the industrial enterprises of the construction industry.

Future development in construction organizations includes growth based on the formation of regional construction, design-construction, scientific-production, and other types of associations. Such associations may manage not only construction divisions, enterprises, and the economy of the construction industry and mechanization and vehicular transportation divisions but also planning, design, and research organizations. It thus becomes practical to introduce modern scientific advances into production, raise the level of concentration, increase specialization, cooperation, and integration of divisions, and use automatic control systems in construction.