# How to open an architecture and design practice, a surveying and cadastre firm or a laboratory in Moldova

Architecture and design, surveying and cadastre, laboratories and periodic vehicle inspection, research and development: none of them requires a licence. What the state controls is not the company but the people who sign. The designer, the design reviewer, the cadastral engineer and the surveyor are certified personally, and the company may work with them only once it has notified the National Inspectorate for Technical Supervision or has them on its staff.

## In brief

- **CAEM codes:** Divisions 71 and 72
- **Licence:** Not required (design has not been licensed since 2017)
- **Share capital:** No minimum
- **Independent entrepreneur:** For architecture and engineering (not for testing or research)

## Architecture and design practice: the INST notification and the designer’s signature

Design is not licensed, but a legal person may not design, review or carry out technical expertise on projects until it has notified the National Inspectorate for Technical Supervision. The notification is filed once, at least 10 working days before activity begins, and contains the list of certified specialists. The project is signed by the certified designer, who answers for it together with the design reviewer.

| Code | Activity | What it means in practice |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 71.11 | Architectural activities | Plans and designs for buildings, urban plans and spatial plans. Interior design is not here but under 74.10. The company notifies INST before its first project. |
| 71.12 | Engineering activities and related technical consultancy | Structural design, building services and networks, roads and hydraulic works, design review, technical expertise. The same INST notification, and certified specialists for each field. |

- **Notification: Notification to the National Inspectorate for Technical Supervision** — National Inspectorate for Technical Supervision (INST), valid for Open-ended. Any legal person carrying out design, design review or technical expertise. It is filed at least 10 working days before activity begins and contains the declaration on the composition of the teams, with the specialists certified in each field, the orders appointing the manager and the person responsible for the archive, and the declaration on the seat, archive and equipment. The Inspectorate registers the company immediately after the 10 days and may not ask for any other documents. The notification is made once, not for each project, and is repeated only when activities are extended or suspended. Without it, the activity is prohibited.
- **Authorisation: Technical and professional certificate for construction specialists** — Certification commissions of the line ministry, through the Office for Spatial Planning, Urban Development, Construction and Housing, valid for 5 years. Designers, design reviewers, technical experts, technical managers, site supervisors and construction testing laboratory specialists. A degree in the field is required and, for designers, at least five years of experience, or three with a master’s degree or doctorate. Certification is free: a written and an oral examination for the first certification, oral only for recertification. The specialist receives a certificate, an ID card and a stamp. Certificates obtained in European Union member states are recognised.

**Who buys it:** People building their own house — most building permits in Moldova are for individual houses. After them come property developers, who commission projects for apartment blocks and complexes; public authorities, which buy through procurement; and companies rebuilding or extending their production and office space.

**What is different about the money:** The fee is freely negotiated — the law calls design a free market — and the copyright in the project belongs to its author. The hidden cost is liability: the designer and the design reviewer are jointly and fully liable for the project, and a reviewed project left unused for five years must be updated and reviewed again.

## Surveying and cadastre: no certified engineer on staff, no work

Cadastral work may be carried out only by legal persons with at least one certified cadastral engineer on their staff, and that engineer is personally responsible for the accuracy of the work. Topographic, geodetic and cartographic work may be done by individuals or companies that hold a topographic-geodetic certificate or employ people who do. Both certificates are free, issued for five years, and come from the certification commissions in the field.

| Code | Activity | What it means in practice |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 71.12 | Engineering activities and related technical consultancy | The same code also covers topographic surveys, geodesy, land boundary surveys and cartography. For cadastral work, the company must have a certified cadastral engineer on its staff. |

- **Authorisation: Cadastral engineer’s certificate** — Agency for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre, valid for 5 years. The condition for a company to carry out cadastral work: at least one certified cadastral engineer on its staff. The certificate is personal and free. Cadastral work is submitted for acceptance to the institution that keeps the cadastre before it can be used.
- **Authorisation: Topographic-geodetic and cartographic certificate** — Agency for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre, valid for 5 years. Geodetic, cartographic and geoinformatic work, done by a certified individual or by a company with certified employees. Required: citizenship or a residence permit, higher education with at least three consecutive years of experience or specialised secondary education with at least seven, plus the list of works entered in the state register. The commission decides within 15 working days, and the certificate is free.

**Who buys it:** Owners selling, buying, inheriting or dividing a plot of land or a flat, who need a cadastral plan. Designers, who cannot start a project without a topographic survey. Builders, who set out the building on the ground, and local authorities, which commission boundary surveys and plans.

**What is different about the money:** Cadastral work does not end at handover: it must be accepted by the institution that keeps the cadastre before it can be used, and the company keeps its archive and transfers it to the Archive Fund if it is wound up. Demand follows the property market, so volume rises and falls with transactions.

## Testing and technical analysis laboratory: accreditation is voluntary, certification is not

A private laboratory needs no licence to open. Accreditation with the National Accreditation Centre, MOLDAC, is voluntary in general and becomes a condition only where a regulation requires it, above all to be recognised as a conformity assessment body. In construction testing laboratories, the specialists who sign the results must be certified.

| Code | Activity | What it means in practice |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 71.20 | Technical testing and analysis | Physical and chemical testing of materials, weld testing, environmental measurements, product certification. No permissive act; MOLDAC accreditation is voluntary. |

**Permits:** Class 71.20 does not appear in the licence nomenclature, and a laboratory needs no authorisation to operate. Two things stand in place of a permissive act: certification of the staff who sign construction test results, by category, with required experience of one to five years, and MOLDAC accreditation, which is mandatory only for those who want to be recognised as a conformity assessment body.

**Who buys it:** Builders and site supervisors, who need concrete, soil and weld testing. Manufacturers certifying their products for export. Companies that have to measure their emissions or noise for environmental permits.

**What is different about the money:** Of all the branches on this page, the laboratory needs the most equipment before its first contract, and that equipment must be kept calibrated. Accreditation, if you pursue it, is an investment of time and money that pays back only if your clients ask for it.

## Periodic technical inspection station: an ANTA authorisation for each station

Periodic technical inspection of motor vehicles is classified under 71.20, not under vehicle servicing, and requires an authorisation from the National Road Transport Agency for each station. The authorisation is free, issued within three working days and does not expire, but the documents are filed again every five years. The station manager and the inspectors need certificates of competence of their own.

| Code | Activity | What it means in practice |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 71.20 | Technical testing and analysis | Periodic testing of motor vehicles belongs here too. Unlike a laboratory, an inspection station needs an ANTA authorisation. |

- **Authorisation: Authorisation for periodic technical inspection activity** — National Road Transport Agency (ANTA), valid for Unlimited, with the documents refiled every five years. Each technical inspection station, for each vehicle category entered. Required: title to the building, a declaration of good repute, the certificates of competence of the manager and the inspectors, the list of equipment with valid metrological verification certificates, and a plan of the station. The decision comes within three working days, and the authorisation is free. The manager must be an engineer or technician in road transport, with at least five years of experience.

**Who buys it:** Car owners, who bring their cars in for periodic inspection, and transport companies, which run whole fleets, including vehicles in special categories: lorries over 3.5 tonnes, dangerous goods, perishable goods, buses. Each inspection category is entered separately in the authorisation, so a station for cars cannot inspect a lorry.

**What is different about the money:** The station is built once and costs a lot: owned or rented premises, a test line and equipment with valid metrological verification certificates. Revenue, in return, is recurring and predictable, because inspection is not optional for customers.

## Research and development company: no accreditation, and access to the IT parks for a few subclasses

A private research and development company needs neither a licence nor accreditation. The institutional evaluation carried out by the national agency concerns public-law organisations, and project funding is won through the competitions of the National Agency for Research and Development. A few research subclasses in natural sciences, engineering and biotechnology are eligible for the IT park tax regime.

| Code | Activity | What it means in practice |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 72.19 | Other research and experimental development on natural sciences and engineering | Applied research and experimental development in engineering, mathematics, computer science, physics. A few subclasses based on high-performance computing equipment are eligible for the IT park regime. |
| 72.11 | Research and experimental development on biotechnology | Eligible for the IT park regime only in bioinformatics and nanobiotechnology. |
| 72.20 | Research and experimental development on social sciences and humanities | Research in economics, law, sociology, linguistics. No permissive act. Market research is not here but under 73.20. |

**Permits:** No class in division 72 appears in the nomenclature of permissive acts. The Code on Science and Innovation recognises a private research company as a commercial organisation founded for profit, with no admission procedure. Mandatory accreditation of publicly funded research organisations was a transitional rule from 2004 and no longer has any effect.

**Who buys it:** Companies outsourcing their product development, foreign partners looking for applied research teams in engineering, mathematics or computer science, and competitive funding programmes, both national and European.

**What is different about the money:** Pay in research and development is above average, but the division is made up mainly of institutes and universities, not companies: of almost 2,600 employees in the division, fewer than 350 work in companies that file financial statements. A private research company is, for now, a rarity.

## How the sector got here

- **27 October 2017 — Nomenclature of permissive acts, annex 1 to Law no. 160/2011.** Construction design, construction and topographic-geodetic work disappear from the list of licences. Until then, all three were licensed by the Licensing Chamber. The licence is replaced by the specialists’ technical and professional certificate.
- **30 January 2025 — Urban Planning and Construction Code no. 434/2023.** The Code replaces Law no. 721/1996 on quality in construction. Since then, design, design review and expertise firms have had to notify the National Inspectorate for Technical Supervision before starting work, and specialist certification has moved to a new regulation, with free certificates valid for five years.
- **25 June 2026 — Tax Code, chapter 10⁴.** Architecture and engineering join the list of activities open to the independent entrepreneur regime, with a single tax of 15% on income of up to 1.2 million lei a year. Technical testing and research and development are not on the list.
- **1 January 2027 — Law no. 778/2001 on geodesy, cartography and geoinformatics.** The topographic-geodetic certificate also requires a certificate of professional competence, obtained after a training programme. The condition applies to new applicants.

## What the sector pays and how big the market is

For 2025, 1,328 architecture, engineering and technical testing companies filed financial statements; together they employed almost 4,200 people and had sales revenue of about 2.4 billion lei. A year earlier there were 1,197, so their number grew by more than 130 in 2025.

Average gross monthly earnings in division 71 stood at 17,402 lei at the end of 2025, above the economy-wide average of about 16,400 and more than 2,000 lei higher than a year before.

Research and development has to be read separately, because the statistics see it in two ways that do not match. In the employment figures, division 72 has almost 2,600 employees. In the financial statements filed by companies, it has 63 economic agents with fewer than 350 people. The difference is the institutes and universities, which do most of the research and do not report as companies.

Demand for design shows most clearly in building permits: in 2025, 2,955 permits were issued for new buildings, more than 2,000 of them for individual houses and almost a third in Chișinău municipality. Every one of them started from a project signed by a certified specialist.

## The state certifies people, not the company

Until 2017, construction design and topographic-geodetic work were licensed. Since then the licence has ceased to exist, and control has moved to the people who sign: the designer, the design reviewer, the technical expert, the site supervisor, the laboratory specialist, the cadastral engineer, the surveyor.

The practical consequence is that your company is worth exactly as much as the certified specialists it has. A design practice without an architect or an engineer certified in the relevant field can be registered at the Public Services Agency, but it cannot sign the project. A cadastre firm without a certified cadastral engineer on its staff may not carry out the work.

When you plan the company, the first question is not which CAEM code to declare but who signs. If you sign, you need your own certification. If you hire, it is the employee’s certification that opens the market to you — and if they leave, it leaves with them.

## Design: notification, signature, review

### The INST notification is the step almost everyone forgets

The Urban Planning and Construction Code requires legal persons that design, review projects or carry out technical expertise to notify the National Inspectorate for Technical Supervision, so as to be entered in the State Register in the field of construction. Without the notification, these activities are prohibited.

The procedure is simple and works in the company’s favour. You file the declaration on the composition of the teams, with the specialists certified in each field, the orders appointing the manager and the person responsible for the archive, and a declaration that you have a seat, an archive and equipment. The Inspectorate may not ask you for any other documents and must register you immediately after the 10 working days. If it does not respond, the notification is deemed valid. If the file is incomplete, you receive a provisional registration and 20 working days to complete it.

So the order is: register the company, notify INST, wait ten working days, sign the first contract.

### The designer’s signature is liability, not a formality

Through the right of signature, the designer assumes professional liability for the project. Design documentation must be reviewed by a certified design reviewer, and unreviewed documentation may not be used. The designer and the reviewer are jointly and fully liable.

For a small practice, that means two things. First, you need an independent reviewer for every project, paid separately and shown in the budget. Second, a certified specialist may not hold two roles on the same building, so you cannot review your own project.

### Certification of specialists

Certification is carried out by the commissions of the line ministry, through the Office for Spatial Planning, Urban Development, Construction and Housing, and is free. A designer needs a degree in the field and at least five years of experience, or three with a master’s degree or doctorate. The first certification has a written and an oral stage; recertification every five years is oral only.

Old certificates, obtained before 2025, remain valid until they expire. Certificates issued in European Union member states are recognised, with registration at the commission and a certified translation into Romanian.

Moldova has no separate law on architects and no mandatory professional chamber, unlike Romania, which has both. The professions of architect and construction engineer are regulated directly in the Urban Planning and Construction Code, and the state keeps a public register of certified architects, urban planners and engineers.

## Surveying and cadastre: the difference between the two

They are often done by the same company, under the same CAEM code, but the law treats them differently.

**Topographic, geodetic and cartographic** work may be done by a certified individual or by a company with certified employees. The topographic-geodetic certificate requires higher education and at least three consecutive years of experience, or specialised secondary education and seven years, plus the list of works already entered in the state register. From 1 January 2027, new applicants also need a certificate of professional competence, obtained after a training programme.

**Cadastral** work is carried out only by legal persons — under public or private law — with at least one certified cadastral engineer on their staff. The work is not finished when it is handed to the client: it must be accepted by the institution that keeps the cadastre. The technical supervision inspectorate checks it, and the archive remains the company’s obligation.

Both certificates are issued free of charge, for five years, through the Agency for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre.

## Periodic technical inspection: the most regulated branch

An inspection station is the only business on this page that needs an authorisation in the firm’s own name; the other certificates on this page are personal. The National Road Transport Agency issues it for each station and for each inspection category: vehicles up to 3.5 tonnes, over 3.5 tonnes, international transport, dangerous goods, perishable goods, buses. The decision comes within three working days.

The authorisation does not expire, but every five years you file the full set of documents again. The station manager must be an engineer or technician in road transport with at least five years of experience; inspectors need at least two years of experience and a driving licence. Both obtain certificates of competence from the same agency, after a course and a test, valid for five years. Equipment without valid metrological verification is grounds for suspension.

## Which legal form to choose: SRL or independent entrepreneur

For a design practice with employees, a cadastre firm, a laboratory or a technical inspection station, an SRL. The cadastre law requires a legal person, and the INST notification is, by definition, an obligation of legal persons. Limited liability matters more here than in other fields, because the designer and the reviewer are fully liable for the project.

An architect or engineer working alone has, since June 2026, a new option: the independent entrepreneur regime, which includes 71.11 and 71.12. You pay 15% of income up to 1.2 million lei a year and 35% above that, with no accounting and no returns. The option has two limits. If your client is a company with more than nine employees, or if the payments to you exceed the limits set by law, the relationship is treated as employment for tax purposes. And the Urban Planning and Construction Code does not say explicitly whether a project signed by an independent entrepreneur, with no INST notification, will get through the building permit stage, so for projects that need a permit the SRL remains the safe choice.

Technical testing and research and development are not on the independent entrepreneur list.

For eligible research, the option to compare is the IT park regime. How it works is explained in the [Moldova IT Park guide](/en/blog/moldova-it-park-complete-guide), and the tax can be checked against your own figures with the [tax calculator](/en/it-park-calculator).

We handle the choice of CAEM codes, the articles of association, the filing at the Public Services Agency and the opening of the bank account, and we can take over the company’s accounting from the first month. What each service includes is set out on the [corporate services](/en/corporate-services) page.

## Frequently asked questions

### Do you need a licence to open a design practice in Moldova?

No, the licence was abolished in 2017. In its place, the company notifies the National Inspectorate for Technical Supervision at least 10 working days before its first project, with the list of certified specialists, and the Inspectorate registers it once that period has expired. Without the notification, design, design review and technical expertise are prohibited. The notification is made once, not for each building project.

### How does a designer or an architect get certified?

Through the certification commissions of the line ministry, via the Office for Spatial Planning, Urban Development, Construction and Housing. You need a degree in the field and at least five years of experience, or three with a master’s degree or doctorate. The first certification involves a written and an oral examination, and the procedure is free. The certificate, ID card and stamp are issued within 10 working days and are valid for five years.

### Can a cadastral engineer work on their own?

Not for cadastral work. The cadastre law allows it to be carried out only by legal persons with at least one certified cadastral engineer on their staff, and responsibility for the accuracy of the work rests with that engineer, as an employee. For topographic and geodetic work the rule is broader: a certified individual may also do it.

### What CAEM code does a vehicle inspection station use?

71.20, technical testing and analysis. The classifier’s note names periodic testing of motor vehicles explicitly. Vehicle servicing, under 45.20, covers repairs, washing, painting and tyres, but not inspection. If you do both, you declare both, and for inspection you apply separately for the National Road Transport Agency’s authorisation, for each station.

### Which research activities fall under the IT park regime?

Only a few subclasses. From 72.19: research in mathematics, in computers and computer science, in physics, in nanotechnology and other engineering research, all based on high-performance computing equipment. From 72.11: bioinformatics and nanobiotechnology. Research in social sciences and humanities, and all architecture, engineering and testing activities, are not eligible.

### Can an architect work as an independent entrepreneur?

Yes. Architecture (71.11) and engineering (71.12) are on the independent entrepreneur list, with a single tax of 15% up to 1.2 million lei a year. The regime has a catch, though: if you work for a company that falls outside the limits set by law — one with more than nine employees, for example — the relationship is treated as employment for tax purposes and taxed like a salary.

Choosing the CAEM codes, drafting the constitutive documents and filing with the Public Services Agency are part of the registration service.