The international practice of project management is to establish a set of investment control and risk restraint mechanism for owners and investors; It is also the "rules of the game" for engineering consulting and construction enterprises to compete.
With the approach of China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), China will become one of the biggest hotspots in the international construction market, and the knowledge of project management in international practices is more important to China owners, engineering consulting industry and construction enterprises. Today, we should understand the urgency of integrating China's project management with international standards from the perspective of industrial survival, and deeply understand the project management mechanism and operation of international practices, so as to analyze the crux of China's project management and the lack of functions of China's engineering consulting and construction enterprises, and then rebuild a brand-new project management system for China's investment and construction and China's international competitiveness.
(I) The international practice and operation connotation of the project owner system The owner (customer) refers to the buyer or customer in English. The target of its procurement is engineering, a special contract commodity. According to the procurement guidelines of the World Bank, the owner system is an engineering procurement mechanism for the owners to achieve the two goals of "economy" and "efficiency" under the conditions of market economy. As far as the content is concerned, it includes the selection of design and supervision project consultants by the owner, the selection of construction contractors and the micro-supervision of contractors in the construction process. The basic means of selection is to cause competition between engineering consultants and construction contractors. The competition between engineering consultants and construction contractors is different, and the latter is the bidding method we often hear.
The basic operating framework of the internationally accepted project owner system is the procurement guide of the World Bank and the International Federation of Consulting Engineers. Quotfidyk“FIDIC "engineering technology and project management standard. The internationally accepted owner system is a complete, scientific and mature investment control and risk restraint mechanism for investors and owners. In addition to the international development institutions represented by the World Bank, more and more governments and economic organizations tend to accept and emphasize it. Investment is a dynamic process from capital flow to logistics and then to capital flow. The purpose of investment is to get a higher rate of return, but this dynamic process is full of risks.
In the industrial investment of the project, the main performance is the risk of project management. The basic mystery of the international practice of owner system is that the owner takes advantage of its favorable market position to turn the contractor into an "intermediate investor" and then transfer the risk to the contractor to the maximum extent. Investment is a dynamic value-added cycle in which capital forms assets, assets are managed to improve asset efficiency, and finally assets are transformed into capital. According to the international owner system, the temporary works of the construction contractor (even including the office and living facilities of the on-site engineers supervised by the owner), construction equipment, materials, management fees and even the living expenses and wages of employees must be paid in advance by themselves. The owner shall pay the contractor 90% of the bid unit price of the completed works according to the certificate of the supervision site engineer. With the payment of the progress payment, the owner gradually bought the project. During the execution of the project, the contractor will prepay funds to form intangible assets such as the above-mentioned tangible assets and construction rights. He delivered qualified projects through his own construction and management, and turned assets into funds. Its profit-the difference between the actual cost of the project and the bid price-is also the return on investment. Someone will ask? Quot in international projects, shouldn't the owner provide the project start-up fee when the project starts? "yes. However, according to international practice, the contractor must submit a performance bond accounting for 10% ~ 15% of the bid price and an advance payment bond equal to the advance payment before winning the contract.
In some countries, the deposit can be replaced by the letter of guarantee issued by the bank designated by the owner, and the "unconditional irrevocable letter of guarantee" is widely used. It gives the owner the right to ask the bank to pay when he finds the contractor's breach of contract, and the bank has the obligation to pay unconditionally. Two points must be pointed out: first, the construction advance payment of the owner is gradually deducted from the previous progress payment; Second, in the fierce competition in the construction market, the contractor's profit can never be greater than the performance bond. With such a deposit in hand, the owner can force the contractor to stop work, rework, or even confiscate the deposit, fire the contractor, and hire others with the contractor's deposit.
In a word, all the expenses were invested by the contractor before receiving the progress payment, and he never dared to risk default if he wanted to recover his investment.
(B) the premise of international practice for the implementation of the project owner system
When we say that the owner has a superior market position, we mean that the construction market is a buyer's market. The advantage of the international customary owner system is that it temporarily transfers the risk to the contractor and a series of guarantee mechanisms. There are two basic prerequisites for the implementation of the owner system in international practice: first, there is a team of industrialized supervision consulting experts who are proficient in design, bidding, construction, management, business, law and foreign languages and have a good reputation; Second, there are extremely specific and strict norms on the content, mode and depth of supervision work and the professional ethics of employees. Bidding system and construction supervision system are two mutually conditional and inseparable aspects and processes of selecting and supervising construction contractors in the international owner system. In terms of importance, it is obvious that the regulatory system is more prominent.
International project owners must sign at least three contracts: two consulting service contracts and one construction contract. The former is a design contract and a supervision contract. Project bidding is only a part of the design contract. In any case, supervision services must have an independent contract. The supervision consultant must be proficient in the design, construction management, finance, administration and legal issues related to the project.
The bidding system and supervision system in the owner system are actually the relationship between "legislation" and "law enforcement" in the implementation of a specific project. According to international practice, the design of an engineering project is a generalized design, not only the construction drawing design, but also the whole bidding document. Bidding documents are divided into two categories: technology and management, and there are four blocks: drawings, technical specifications, bill of quantities and contract conditions. Among them, the bill of quantities is a budget table without pricing, and the contract conditions stipulate the mutual status, rights and obligations of the owner, supervision consultant and contractor, which is basically a set of mechanisms for the owner's investment control and risk constraint.
In fact, bidding means that bidders fill in their own unit price and total price on the bill of quantities according to drawings, technical specifications and contract conditions. When submitting the tender, the bidder must also attach the tender, stating that he fully understands and accepts all the contract documents of the owner, and this price is binding on the bidder ...? Quot Drawings, technical specifications and contract conditions are the basis of the contractor's bid quotation. After winning the bid, together with the priced bill of quantities and bidding documents, they are the basis for the owner's supervision engineer to supervise. So we say that design is "legislation" for contractors and supervision is "law enforcement" for them. Objectively speaking, because the construction market is a buyer's market, the contract conditions of international practice tend to safeguard the interests of the owners, which gives the owners great power to supervise the consultants, while the contractors have only limited rights.
The fierce competition in the construction market makes contractors have to be competitive in price in order to win the contract, which leads to bidding among bidders. Some companies try to win the bid at a break-even "suicide" price in order to continue their operations or for some purpose. But in essence, no contractor is willing to build a qualified project for the owner at the price of "suicide". Bidding and suggestions: In a hurry or slowly? What is rhyme? Hey? Swing and tease? In the process of construction, the contractor will inevitably cut corners by closely monitoring the contractor's materials, technology, quality, equipment, technology and even construction, so as to expand profits or minimize losses. This is why China's projects use bamboo chips as reinforcement and foam and random bricks as concrete. In fact, if the foundation of a project is reliable and the design is scientific and economical, the risks brought to the owner are mainly the quality and duration of the project. In this way, the supervision of international practices, as the most important risk restraint mechanism, is self-evident.
Today, why can't the project owner system in China play such a powerful role as the international practice? It seems that the laws and regulations of the bidding supervision system in China are not perfect.
A typical example is that we separate the bidding system from the supervision system, especially putting the cart before the horse. For example, in China, the bidding review is in 1982 and the supervision review is in 1988. At present, the bidding law is in legislation, and I don't know when to supervise the legislation. So far, we have not fundamentally realized that the international practice of engineering supervision is the most important thing in project management and even investment management. In operation, the main problems in the bidding of the owner system in China are "three publics" (openness, fairness and justice), but the bigger problem is the current supervision system. The "construction supervision" in China is quite different from the "construction supervision" in international project execution not only in terms of appellation, but also in coverage and operation. Specifically, the implementation of the owner system in China lacks the above two preconditions.
First of all, so far, there is no unified and clear regulation on the content, mode, procedure and depth of supervision in China. There is only "reference to international norms" in professional ethics. These will inevitably lead to the arbitrariness of supervision operation and the "flexibility" of dealing with incompetent supervisors. The fundamental difference between Chinese and foreign supervision systems is that international supervision is closely supervised by the site engineer of the owner during the construction process, and its core is "on-site" and "under construction".
Most of the supervision in our country is "mobile", or a group of people go to check and leave an impression after completion. It is almost impossible to find problems and hidden dangers. Secondly, China does not have an industrialized supervision team that is proficient in engineering technology, project management, business and law and has strict professional ethics constraints.
Second, the international practice of source control of project owner system
China's project owner system can not achieve the effect of investment control and risk constraint for a long time. First of all, we failed to objectively understand the whole process of the project owner system, thus ignoring its source; Then, in practice, China owners generally failed to take advantage of favorable market position and economic laws to form an effective investment control and risk-constrained project management mechanism.
(1) Where is the origin of the international project owner system in China? When it comes to investment control or project management, people will think of the owner system. In the eyes of many people, the content of the owner system is the bidding system and the construction supervision system, and the way out for project management reform is to improve the bidding and supervision system.
At present, China's project bidding supervision system and legal system construction are relatively backward. However, it is extremely one-sided to think that the project owner system is the bidding system plus supervision system, ignoring the source control performance of the project owner system. As an investor, any project owner hopes to purchase the project with the best quality and performance at the lowest price and the shortest construction period. The owner is not only a construction contractor, but also an engineering consultant. As a special contract commodity, engineering condenses the value of equipment, materials, labor and management invested by the contractor, and also condenses the labor value of consultant design and supervision. In fact, it is narrow to measure the impact of the contract price of consultants and contractors on project investment control and risk constraint.
From the development cycle of the project, there are three stages: pre-development stage (before and after the project is established), implementation stage and operation stage. Among them, the implementation period includes bidding, construction and supervision, and the contractor only involves the bidding and construction stages, and the consulting service runs through the whole process. The current construction projects have huge investment, long cycle and wide professional fields. Project management itself is a systematic project, which includes narrow-sense projects and far exceeds narrow-sense projects. According to the description of Dr. Kozner, President of American Institute of Project Management.
This reveals the relationship and premise between the management objectives of an ideal project, that is, a successful project can meet the construction period (T), cost (C) and technical and performance requirements (P) to the maximum extent through the rational allocation of resources. As the environmental conditions of a specific project, there should be good contact and relationship between the owner and the contractor. In the actual project implementation, the construction period and budget are often exceeded due to various reasons, and the technology and performance can not meet the design requirements. In this case, the triangle in figure 1 becomes as shown in figure 2.
In this way, the actual t = t1+t2; c = c 1+C2； P = p 1 P2. If T, C and P in figure 1 are all optimal designs, the change of any one of them means that investors are at risk. Prolonging the construction period will not only lead to out-of-control investment, but also lose market opportunities. Taking real estate as an example, the office sales of 1994 account for 38% of the annual completion, while those of 1995 only account for about 12%. If a high-grade office building should have been handed over at 1 994 and dragged to 1995, the risk of the developer will be more than double that of 1994. Without changing the quality and performance, if the budget is exceeded, the cost of the product will increase and the debt of investors will also increase. Unqualified quality also makes products uncompetitive. In addition, owners must invest heavily in remedial measures.
In fact, there are two conditions for the owner to achieve the goal of figure 1: first, the definitions of T, C and P must be scientific, and then there is an effective mechanism to keep T and C from exceeding the standard and P from shrinking. The definition of T, C and P is design, and the mechanism to ensure the goal is supervision, and design and supervision are exactly the two major contents of engineering consultation in the project implementation stage.
The following diagram (Figure 3) of the relationship between people involved in international projects is very illustrative. Figure 3 shows that the owner contacted the designer and the budget estimator respectively for a project. The budget estimator reports the approximate investment to the owner, and the designer submits the project design to the budget estimator for detailed accounting. The accounting result is the pre-tender estimate as a reference for bid evaluation. The design documents are the basis for the bid quotation and construction of the contractor after winning the bid. Design documents are also distributed to the supervisor as the basis for micro-supervision in the construction process.
There are two obvious reasons: first, the owner manages the contractor through consultants (designers, budget estimators and supervisors); Secondly, the selection and design of T, C, P and safeguard mechanism also depend on consultants. Therefore, the source of owner system control is engineering consulting industry rather than construction industry. Figure 3. Consultant-centered international project management originated from Edward, the founder of Total Quality Management in the West. Dr. Deming's management philosophy: quality control should be carried out in design rather than testing, because he observed that 85% of quality problems were caused by design, and only 15% was caused by operators. This coincides with the survey in Wang Yuhu and Han Li: "In China, the investment in the design stage is 70% ~ 85%, while in the implementation stage, the possibility of saving investment by strengthening management and technical measures is only 5% ~ 10%".
This kind of strengthening management and technical measures can only come from effective supervision, which once again shows that the source of owner control is the engineering consulting industry.
(b) How to control the source of the international project owner system?
International project owners make it a set of investment control and risk restraint mechanism for owners, aiming at realizing the two basic principles of economy and efficiency in the World Bank procurement guide. These two basic principles should first be embodied in the design of project bidding documents, and secondly, the contractor should be selected through bidding to supervise the construction process. Therefore, in the whole operation of the international project owner system, the most important thing is to choose a consultant who fully understands the owner's needs, reflects and ensures the realization of this demand.
Western consulting industry can be divided into two categories: management consulting and engineering consulting. According to international practice, only the design of bidding documents accounts for about 5% of the project investment. Of course, the design documents here include drawings, technical specifications, bill of quantities and contract specifications. These designs are only a part of the scope of work in the design contract, and other contents are bidding publicity, pre-qualification and bid evaluation.
Because westerners have long made it clear that design is the source of project management, western owners are also skilled in using consultant competition to select consultants. According to authoritative statistics in the United States, the success rate and failure rate of competitive consulting contract of a medium-sized engineering consulting company in the United States are 1∶5. Due to fierce competition, western engineering consulting companies have absorbed some experts in investment analysis and management, so that their consulting services can be "extended" to the opportunity research in the early stage of project development and "delayed" to the management after the completion of the project, thus obtaining more consulting services.
Objectively speaking, the international public bidding we are talking about here is just a contract, that is, the owner chooses the design consultant first, and the documents designed by the consultant are put into bidding. The project was carried out by an independent contractor who won the bid. The other is "design with construction?" Quot and its derivative turn-key contract, even materials and equipment are provided by Party B. Of course, there are also bidding and negotiation contracts. Different forms of contracts determine that the parties to the project are in different positions. For example, a small-scale project, the implementation of international open and selective competition, high bidding costs, too long; If a project is not completed and some projects are added to the project, re-tendering will not only delay time, but also bring chaos on the spot; Turn-key project seems to save the owners a lot of trouble, but this kind of contract excludes competition and the cost is much higher. The World Bank will hardly recognize such a contract. The owner will not accept turn-key contract unless he has to. After the owner chooses the contract form, he chooses the consultant. The way to choose or consult a company for competition is demonstration. Statement is two processes and ways in the competitive contract of engineering consulting industry. "Chen" is an exhibition, and "Shu" is a statement and defense. The former includes drawings, pictures, scale models and other exhibits, while the latter expresses how its own design reflects the needs of the owners and what mechanisms are in place to ensure the realization of the goals.
With the development of computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided management (CAM), multi-coal and audio-visual technology, multi-dimensional space stereo design and dynamic means such as movies and videos have replaced traditional static furnishings and exhibitions. The opportunity for the consultant to win the design and supervision contract lies in showing and expressing how his design fully reflects and meets the needs of the owner in terms of time, cost, technical quality and performance, and what mechanisms and means he has to ensure the realization of the goal.
International owners generally employ and organize a review committee to rate the consultants who state the competition and select the best candidates. In the bidding for selecting a construction contractor, once the owner chooses a potential contractor, he must negotiate with him and ask him to submit a performance bond accounting for more than 10% of the bid price before awarding the contract. Similarly, once the owners choose potential consultants, they must also negotiate. During the negotiation, the owner not only bargained for the consulting fee and work content, but also asked the selected consultant to integrate the advanced technology, technology or mechanism of those competitors into his design and supervision.
At present, in many projects financed by international commercial banks, the owners insist that consultants must submit deposits exceeding the construction period and budget before they can be formally awarded consulting contracts. This mechanism fully embodies the owner's sense of source control: not only contractors but also consultants are bound. This is the real significance of the consulting industry being pushed to the market. Only in this way can the project consultant be put into the market, and the risk of the owner's project implementation will be minimized.
Third, the choice of international engineering contracts and their impact on investment
As we all know, the construction market is basically a buyer's market, because the recognized standard contract format and terms represented by "Fidyk" are basically based on safeguarding the interests of the owners. However, in reality, not every owner is in a favorable market position at any time. Smart owners understand that the maximum investment control and risk constraint certainly need to restrain consultants and contractors, but they also need to motivate them. Therefore, a scientific contract should include two mechanisms: risk constraint and positive incentive.
(A) the choice of international project contracting mode
Internationally, owners are divided into private sector and public sector. The former includes non-state-owned companies, while the latter refers to loan projects of governments at all levels and international development institutions. Projects are divided into industrial, commercial and civil categories according to their nature, and large-scale projects and small and medium-sized projects according to the scale of investment.
At present, there are more than ten kinds of engineering contracts in the world. In fact, project contract selection has two meanings:
First, does the owner choose the engineering consultant (design and supervision) and the construction contractor respectively, or will the design and construction of the project be entrusted to a contractor? We often talk about competitive bidding, that is, the owner first selects the consultant, and the consultant designs the bidding documents including technical and supervision specifications, and then bids among potential contractors. "Turn-key" is a typical contracting method. This choice determines whether the owner should contact the consultant or the builder who provides both design and construction services first. Of course, in the latter case, the owner still has to hire an independent supervision consultant.
Second, is the project competitive bidding at a fixed price, as emphasized by the World Bank and many governments, or is it a contract negotiation? Competitive bidding includes "selective competition" and "open competition". Quot two kinds. Bargaining contracts mainly include "design-build", "turnkey", "package deal" and their derivatives. The main difference between selective bidding and open competitive bidding is that according to selective bidding, after the design of contract documents is completed by the consultant of the owner, the owner chooses several reputable construction companies to make quotations, and the number of companies is limited to about six. According to the way of public bidding, the owner will create an intentional advertisement within a certain range after the design of the project document is completed. Theoretically speaking, there is no limit to the number of bidders, which gives some bidders who are not known to the owners the opportunity to bid, expands the competition and is beneficial to the owners.
However, this kind of bidding cycle is long and the workload of bid evaluation and calibration is large. In order to prevent speculation, owners usually limit the number of competitors through preliminary selection or pre-qualification. According to the statistics of National Economic Development Bureau (NEDO), the project cost of bidding negotiation is generally about 5% higher than that of competitive bidding. As a developed country, there are almost no World Bank projects in Britain, and the preference and frequency of contract forms adopted by various British owners are thought-provoking: selective competitive contracting is suitable for all types of projects of all sizes, while the open competitive bidding insisted by the World Bank and the governments of developing countries is mostly only used for projects purchased by the British government and small and medium-sized projects in the private sector.
On the contrary, negotiation forms such as "design plus construction" and "turnkey", which are almost impossible to pass in the World Bank, almost invariably appear in private industrial and commercial civil projects, especially large-scale projects. How to explain this phenomenon? The author believes that, first of all, the preference and selection frequency of project contract forms are related to the national conditions, specifically to the composition of investment subjects. The investors in developed countries are not the government, but the private sector. The private sector is not bound by this policy and is less suspected of being "opaque". Secondly, it is influenced by the status of the owner and the focus of attention. Although competitive bidding has advantages in all projects, there will be some situations: at that time, the owners could not find enough potential contractors in the contracting market and could not form meaningful competition; Due to the particularity of the owner's projects, such as nuclear energy projects, there are too few companies that can be taken down; Then there is the change of priority that the owner cares about. Traditionally, what are his priorities? C (cost), p (quality, performance, function, aesthetic feeling, etc. ), t (time, duration). Now the new rankings brought by the improvement of western market awareness are T, P and C.
According to NEDO's statistics, the same project is contracted by negotiation, and the whole execution period is shortened by 3 ~ 4 months compared with competitive bidding. The loss of a company's market opportunity and position in three to four months may far exceed 5% of the cost.
In fact, the preference and frequency of owners' selection of project contracts in market economy reflect the advantages and disadvantages of these two types of contracts in investment control and risk constraint from another angle. The advantages of competitive contract are as follows: ① It is beneficial to cost estimation and management. ② Reduce the project cost through competition and transfer the risk to the contractor. (3) managed by independent design and supervision consultants to increase transparency and control of T, P and C. ..
Its disadvantages are: ① its implementation depends on the owner and must be in a favorable buyer's market position. ② The total execution cycle of the project is too long. Because, in addition to bidding publicity and pre-qualification, it requires all detailed design documents to be completed before bidding, otherwise, the basis for bidders to evaluate bids will be insufficient. A complete project design takes a long time. In contrast, the contractor in the negotiation can not only enter the site in advance, but also cooperate with the design. (3) This kind of contract is risky for the contractor. In order to prevent accidents, bidders must offer high prices to protect themselves. Of course, this does not mean that negotiations are superior. In fact, the shortcomings of bidding negotiation are also obvious: first, no competition will inevitably lead to high contractor prices; Second, negotiations make it difficult to control the owner's budget and cost; Third, the owner needs to supervise and audit vigorously; Fourthly, the most important thing is that consultants and contractors lack motivation to achieve the T, C and P objectives of the project.
(B) innovation in the form of international project management contracts
As the legal basis for all parties to perform the project, the project contract makes one party's interests based on the other party's risks, and one party's willingness to take risks depends on its own market position and needs to be given priority. At present, the project investment is generally large, and with the introduction of a large number of cutting-edge technologies, processes and equipment, the professional requirements for implementation are higher. At the same time, due to the trend of shortening the technology update cycle and the change of market awareness of owners. The status of owners and contractors has also changed. In this way, both parties need to find an acceptable contract form. For the owner, this kind of contract should be a mechanism integrating investment control, risk constraint and contractor incentive mechanism.
On the basis of synthesizing and sublating the traditional general contracting contract and negotiation contract, the innovation of engineering contract form has been formed internationally. The most successful forms of this contract innovation are "construction management contract" and "project manager employment contract". According to the "construction management contract", the owner must first designate a construction management contractor.
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