Construction project supervision goes into misunderstanding
The construction supervision system has been controversial since its implementation. The key point is that the industry and all walks of life can't agree on many problems of this project management system. How to cultivate, develop and standardize construction supervision, the government, enterprises and the market have made different choices, which has led to this system with good subjective wishes gradually deviating from the market and entering a misunderstanding. The legitimate interests of engineering supervision enterprises are damaged, and the whole industry lives in a deformed environment. The practice of construction supervision can not be in line with international engineering management practices, supervision.
1, the concept of construction project supervision
The Code for Construction Engineering Supervision (GB0329——2000) defines construction engineering supervision as "the so-called construction engineering supervision refers to the professional supervision and management of engineering construction entrusted by the project construction unit with corresponding qualifications according to the national laws and regulations on engineering construction, engineering project construction documents, construction engineering entrusted supervision contracts and other construction engineering contracts approved by the competent construction department." It includes engineering consultation in the early stage of construction, and supervision and management in various stages such as bidding, survey and design, construction acceptance and operation warranty in the later stage of construction. When the country introduced this system, it did not refer to the project management mode corresponding to a certain project procurement method. Theoretically, all the service activities entrusted by the owner to the supervision company are collectively called supervision, which is a part of international engineering consulting. Supervision engineers often compare themselves to engineers in FIDIK contract conditions and consulting engineers mentioned in various contract arrangements. Most supervision engineers also understand this point in practice, and there is no new concept because of the different contract arrangements. However, the society's understanding and cognition of supervision is far from the industry, and even there is a serious deviation. With the deepening of supervision practice, the industry also feels that the theory and practice are seriously inadequate. This stems from the unscientific and unreasonable wording design when the construction supervision system was introduced. Because the word "Supervisor" is based on the management experience in the implementation stage of Japanese projects, [1] and the architect in Japanese construction contracts is always called "supervisor", that is, the architect supervises and inspects the implementation of the project, and the English word "supervisor" means supervisor, inspector or supervisor, not supervisor. Because there is no definition in the contract, the construction contract in Japan is very different from that in the west. However, the teaching materials used in supervision training for many years all claim that supervision is not a supervisor, and his position is higher than that of the supervisor, who is the object of supervision. In fact, most on-site supervisors do supervisory work, which is what most owners want, but they are not the supervisors of contractors, but the supervisors hired by owners. In China, supervision engineers never translate into supervision engineers, but emphasize that supervision engineers are engineers or consulting engineers under FIDIK contract conditions. The theoretical confusion has deepened the differences on the concept of supervision in the construction field. The government's emphasis on quality supervision also limits the scope of professional services provided by supervision. In addition, most supervision units do not have the engineering consulting ability in the early stage of construction, and the feasibility study of the project belongs to the management of the planning department. Due to many reasons, engineering supervision is limited to the project implementation stage, which makes the road of supervision narrower and narrower and loses the space for development. This is caused by the confusion of system and government functions and poor guidance. No wonder the supervision unit. Over-emphasis on national conditions has not been adjusted with the changes of national conditions-the changes of market main components and government functions have made supervision units neither replace quality supervision institutions nor become quality evaluation institutions with social credibility; It can neither develop into a consulting company that provides intellectual services for the decision-making and management of engineering construction projects by using modern science and technology, economic management, law and engineering technology, nor has it the ability to provide pre-construction engineering consulting to clients. With the division of engineering cost and engineering consulting (investment) business, the original all-inclusive construction project supervision only includes quality supervision, and the construction supervision has undergone qualitative changes since its introduction. Therefore, [2] we have reason to believe that it is urgent to strengthen the theoretical research of engineering consulting related majors, and study and discuss the principles, procedures, methods, organizations, business development, case analysis and development laws of engineering consulting, so as to promote the scientificity, effectiveness and standardization of engineering consulting industry and strive to improve the technical level of engineering consulting industry in China.
2. The leading role of the government in project supervision.
In China, the government strictly supervises the construction industry from macro to micro. Specifically, the supervision behavior and methods of the supervision engineer are stipulated in the project supervision, and even routine inspection and surprise inspection are carried out on the supervision project. The intensity of administrative law enforcement is increasing year by year, and more and more social resources are used, which shows that the supervision industry is dominated by the government. Excessive government intervention in specific micro-activities is not conducive to the development of the industry. Management is not in place, management should not be offside, the status quo has not changed, the role is not great, and the market order cannot be standardized. For example, the "on-site supervision" system, which has been criticized by the industry, is a characteristic of China, promoted by the government and has a corresponding legal status (Regulations on Quality Management of Construction Projects). As for a form of supervision of project quality in the construction stage, the state has forced the supervision unit to implement it in the Code for Supervision of Construction Projects, Regulations on Quality Management of Construction Projects and Measures for Supervision and Management of Building Construction Projects (Trial) (Ministry of Construction Jianshi [2002] 189), which is fair in the market. The Administrative Measures for Construction Supervision of Building Engineering (Trial) stipulates the key parts and key processes of civil engineering construction supervision, but it does not stipulate the key parts and key processes of mechanical and electrical equipment installation supervision, which is biased and leads to mistakes in understanding. According to the author's experience, there is no problem with buildings and structures, and the safety and function of electromechanical engineering are not guaranteed. In some projects, because the supervision engineer did not supervise the whole process of most electromechanical testing and debugging, and only paid attention to the results, the safety and function of the project failed after it was put into use, or the function could not be played normally. Of course, there is also a market for on-site supervision, which is liked by most owners and has its profound background. Most owners are uneasy about the construction quality of contractors and do not welcome the surface supervision of quality supervision stations. Therefore, it is the only way to seek social institutions for continuous supervision and management, and the emergence of supervisors is reasonable. It reflects the loss of contractor's integrity, the failure of government supervision and the imperfection of social credit system. The consequence of the government's strong intervention with administrative power is that the responsible subject of project quality does not bear the quality responsibility, and the supervision engineer without subjective capacity bears disproportionate responsibility. Today's supervisors have become contractors' builders and quality inspectors. Some people may ask, supervision engineers have many powers, why not exercise them? Excuse me, under the current legal and social environment in our country, can the supervision engineer not start or even stop work because the contractor's site construction personnel and quality inspectors are not on duty? Most projects can't be done at all, because many contractors' on-site quality inspectors are mostly nominal and can't be on duty, and the owners can "understand" this. In this case, the contractor, the owner and the supervisor become 2: 1. Thus, the supervisor became the supervisor. Because he wants to watch, he wants to supervise the whole construction process, and the supervisor wants to act as the contractor and even the quality inspector of the builder. That is the reality. People can condemn the inaction of the supervisor, and the construction administrative department can punish him or even investigate the corresponding responsibility. However, no one cares about the contractor's inaction and the owner's chaos, and the law does not blame the public. Is this fair and just? Isn't this putting the cart before the horse? We can see that the contractor's quality responsibility and management ability have been greatly weakened, because the government emphasizes the possible consequences of the third party's inaction, leaving the shortcomings of the responsible subject (such as lack of training for workers, more migrant workers, poor construction management, etc.). ) to a third party to make up, while ignoring the responsibility of the responsible subject itself. At present, it is a trend to replace the contractor's on-site quality management with the on-site supervision of the supervision unit.
Supervisors are also required to supervise the legality of construction projects and even report the owner's "illegal behavior" to the construction administrative department, which is difficult for supervision engineers and supervision units to do. The construction supervision system includes government supervision and social supervision. Government supervision is mandatory and legal, so the legality of construction projects should be entrusted to government supervision, not to social supervision. The supervision enterprise and the project owner are entrusted and have an economic relationship, that is, the owner is the employer of supervision. Under the supervision situation of the current project implementation stage, it is unrealistic to ask the supervision engineer to supervise the legality of the construction project. It is unreasonable and unreasonable to ask the supervision engineer to report the illegal behavior of the owner to the construction administrative department, which is equivalent to the fact that the service provided by the supervision engineer for the owner has become a supervision activity for the owner. The owner is the supervisor's parents and god, and it is impossible for the supervision engineer to report the owner's illegal behavior to the construction administrative department. In some government projects, the irregular behavior of government departments has long been known, and government supervision cannot be corrected and improved. What are the reasons for social supervision and supervision of the legality of construction projects? The author has been engaged in supervision for ten years, and learned that many projects started without obtaining the construction permit, but the owners greeted the relevant departments and the relevant departments also recognized them. What's more, some projects didn't get construction permits until three to five months after the start of construction, but no one investigated the legal responsibility of the owners, and the construction permits were still issued. Can the supervision engineer refuse to provide supervision services during this period? The standard supervision contract does not stipulate that the owner cannot provide services without handling the construction permit supervision. In this case, supervision can supervise who is legal and who is not. The final result is regulatory inaction and illegal supervision. That is the reality. People know that the supervisor can't do it, but let him do it.
In recent years, more and more responsibility for building safety has been handed over to the supervisor. It's like a mountain, and the supervisor is out of breath. Some requirements are too extreme. For example, it is only fair that the supervisor is required to be foolproof, the government pushes the things that it can't manage and can't manage well to the supervision enterprise, and the supervision enterprise assumes the responsibility, and does not charge safety supervision fees and provides free services. When people saw a safety accident at the construction site, they did not impose administrative and economic penalties on the safety supervision station, but punished the supervision unit and the supervision engineer. The investigation of safety responsibility cannot be handled fairly, and the responsibility of supervision units is infinitely expanded. Supervision has become a low-income and high-risk occupation. What the supervision engineer can do in the construction stage is to review the contractor's construction organization design (scheme) and safety measures. The supervision of safety is only inspection, supervision and promotion. He is not a producer of building products, and has always been responsible for safety. The direct responsible person for site construction safety is the contractor. The safety responsibility imposed on the supervisor at present violates the construction law. The author understands from the project supervised by Hong Kong architects that although the architects check various safety measures and supervise and promote the contractor's safety work during the construction process, they will not bear the responsibility caused by safety accidents unless they give clear instructions to the contractor on safety-related matters. What China should do now is to establish a market mechanism and improve the legal system. For example, on the existing basis, government departments should make statistics on the safety accidents of contractors with corresponding qualifications every year, issue safety records confirmed by the government, and take them as one of the records that contractors must provide when bidding. Relevant laws and regulations can also stipulate under what circumstances and for how long, contractors are not allowed to undertake projects of what scale, thus restricting bad contractors from entering the corresponding construction market, and a bad contractor will be eliminated by the market in the long run. Punishment measures should be fatal to contractors, which can touch their interests and ensure social fairness. The transparent rules of the game recognized by the society will be effective.
People impose too many additional functions on supervision, which goes beyond its social attribute and its own ability, and also violates the principle of market transactions. There are too many things that the supervision bears. Is it necessary to unload them now and restore their true colors?
3. Compulsory supervision
Due to the simple composition of investors, projects in industrialized countries and regions are divided into public investment and private investment, and their construction project organization and implementation methods and contract forms are also different. Except for public investment projects, other projects are not subject to government compulsory supervision at the project implementation stage. In China, due to the diversification of investment subjects, the functions of the government have not completely changed during the planned economy period, and the composition of investment subjects is still complicated in recent years. Therefore, the government has stipulated the engineering projects that must be supervised on a large scale. Not only that, but in some places, due to various reasons, the scope of supervision is getting bigger and bigger, and the fees for supervision are getting lower and lower. What caused the distortion or distortion of the market? The supervision market in Hangzhou was investigated. [3] A large number of owners (accounting for 3 1.7% of the survey population) disapprove of government compulsory supervision. In fact, this is also the case in most countries. Even if the project has been supervised, many owners have their own teams to manage the project, which is called "supervision by supervision". The background of this situation is that the current construction permit must be filled in by the supervision unit, otherwise the construction administrative department will not issue the construction permit; When handling the pre-sale permit of commercial housing, the supervision unit also needs to issue relevant certificates, otherwise the developer can't do the pre-sale permit; The quality supervision station will no longer verify the project quality, and the supervision engineer will organize the project quality acceptance of partial projects and evaluate the unit projects. The owner entrusts some of his responsibilities to the supervision engineer. According to the supervision scope and power stipulated in the supervision contract, it is not actually entrusted. Usually, it is mostly quality control and safety management, that is, the work with the greatest responsibility, the most offensive and the most likely to cause conflicts. Therefore, quite a few owners can't do it without entrusting "supervision". At the same time, the owner still has to organize his own strong project management team, and the corresponding supervision right is often deprived by the owner in the construction. In many projects, it is a waste of social resources and the total management cost of society increases. It reflects the inherent concept of the owner, does not agree with the supervision work, and the supervision can not provide the services required by the owner. In this case, the biggest job of the supervisor is to sign and seal. This shows that China's current supervision system is completely a government compulsory behavior, not a social behavior and social demand. The government should supervise, the owners should supervise, the planned economy is transforming into a modern commodity economy, and the institutional mechanism does not have the soil, environment and market demand for the operation of the supervision system. People's understanding of things is still based on the original way of thinking. Furthermore, China was originally a feudal society with a self-sufficient small-scale peasant economy. In the past, when people did their own things, they always thought they were doing better than others. This habit is rooted in the blood of China people and has been passed down to this day. As a result, there are so many wineries in China that no one can name countless brands of wine; With the largest number of automobile factories in the world, world-class China cars will never be built. Years of planned economy have led to an enterprise being a small society, and the social division of labor lacks specialization. Compulsory supervision may not be a good medicine when the system has not fundamentally changed and the social transformation has not been completed. After more than ten years' efforts, we have a deeper understanding of the management practice of the international construction industry. It is not entirely domestic supervision, but it has its profound theoretical connotation and practical background. So, should we be clear about what kind of projects are regulated in China at present? What is the difference between public investment and private investment? The procurement methods of the project should be diversified and decided by the owner. Different project types adopt different contract conditions. The standard contract model and the contract text on which it is based shall be formulated by relevant industry organizations. The government mainly regulates the construction behavior through legislation, reduces the specific supervision and management of its implementation process, and gradually embarks on the road of small government and big society.
4. Supervision of bidding
Bidding for project supervision has become absurd in some places and even gone astray. Government projects are actually bid opening, bid evaluation, defense and award on the same day. All the procedures were carried out in a hurry. On the surface, these procedures are legal, but in fact, this is a cover-up. How can the bid evaluation team read all the technical bids of all bidders in a short time? Just like this, the tender, which embodies the sweat and wisdom of the supervision bidders, is just watched by the "experts" who evaluate the bids, looking over the contents and measuring the thickness, or simply putting all the bidders' technical standards together, comparing the height and measuring the thickness, and deciding whether it is male or female according to the score, or letting you be the dragon, the default supervision unit must be the first. This misleads the technical standard written by the supervision unit to be thicker and thicker, ranging from dozens of pages to one or two hundred pages. The content is empty, the assumptions are endless, the words are wasted, the rhetoric is piled up, and a large number of standards and specifications are extracted. What's more, some owners only provide part of the project feasibility report and scheme design, but they should supervise the bidders to submit the supervision scheme, analyze the difficulties and supervision points of the project, and put forward reasonable suggestions. However, this can't defeat the supervision units that have already gone through the battlefield. They can still make large-scale supervision plans and answer the questions that the owners are interested in.
So what is the current situation of bidding methods? In Shenzhen, government projects were invited for public bidding in the trading center according to regulations and won the bid on the same day. Because there are loopholes in this method, it is impossible to avoid the illegal behavior of supervision bidders. Now it is changed to draw lots, that is, the short-listed supervision bidders decide who can win the bid by drawing lots. Stop joking. This move is fair on the surface, but some supervision units can't "sign" within one year. Bidding turned into gambling. Most owners of social investment projects choose supervision units through bidding, but generally speaking, the level of supervision fees plays a decisive role. Most owners do not take the knowledge, skills and work experience of professionals as the main factors in choosing supervision engineers. Except for a few owners who adopt international project management mode, methods such as project proposal, negotiation and agreement review are rarely used. This reflects the owner's mentality of hiring supervision engineers and doing more with less money. On the one hand, they need supervision, on the other hand, they don't choose effective supervision methods, and often complain that they can't find good supervision. In fact, the remuneration paid to the supervision engineer is insignificant compared with the potential benefits and importance of the supervision engineer's work to the project. As a recognized rule in engineering consulting entrustment, "high quality must pay high price" is generally not recognized in China.
From the supervision practice of more than ten years, both the owner and the supervision unit have misunderstandings about supervision bidding, and the supervision technical tender lacks pertinence and substantive content. The supervision plan or scheme is called technical proposal, which can better reflect the characteristics of supervision activities as consulting services. [5] Whether the suggestion indicates that the supervision unit has a clear understanding of the supervision task and can make suggestions on the ways and means to perform the task. When some owners are not very clear about the requirements of the work outline, the supervision unit can explain its understanding of the work outline, clarify some inaccuracies, and propose amendments. This is an opportunity for the supervision unit to show its creativity. The core part of the technical proposal-methods and approaches, its content is to describe in detail how the supervision unit will complete various supervision tasks required by the work outline, which is also an important aspect to examine the strength and level of the supervision unit. The success of the proposal depends largely on the choice of experts. The arrangement of supervisors has a great weight in the scoring standard, and directors have the greatest weight. Therefore, in addition to fully meeting the requirements of the work outline, he must also have strong organizational skills. Experienced supervision units often appoint their best experts to play this role. Each selected expert shall carefully prepare his/her resume according to the format specified in the work outline, and take it as an annex to the technical proposal for the owner's review.
5, supervision engineer management
Supervision unit is a highly intelligent management organization, and supervision engineer is a compound talent. At present, this talent resource is still in short supply, and the annual supply can't meet the market demand. Since it is a scarce resource, the state should make full use of it and improve its utilization rate. However, the current policy is to restrict from top to bottom, and supervision engineers cannot flow reasonably. Those who have obtained the qualification of supervision engineer in inland provinces will engage in supervision in the eastern and Pearl River Delta regions, and the competent departments of inland provinces will restrict them and find out various reasons not to handle or delay the relevant procedures. It will be a slow and tedious process to change the supervision work unit and go through the registration formalities. People with the ability and qualification of directors are scarce resources in the supervision industry, but the competent authorities should limit them to being directors in only one project. Moreover, they also asked the director to stay at the construction site. Once the director is not in the construction site during the inspection that day, the supervision unit and the director himself will be recorded in bad records, punished and publicized. However, the competent department turned a blind eye to the cheating behavior of the legal representative of the contractor and the general manager of the company as the project manager. At present, the management system of supervision engineer is like a cage. Once in this cage, there is no free space. I really don't know what this system is designed for. In fact, it restricts the development of productive forces, hinders the development of supervision market, covers up the contradictions in the construction industry, protects backwardness, and does not conform to international practice. What the government should do at this stage is to learn from the experience of industrialized countries and regions: [6] adopt a "professional" management model for the management of engineering consulting, that is, the government formulates relevant laws and regulations to restrict the professional behavior of engineering supervision professionals; Professional organizations (societies) are responsible for the examination and certification of professional qualifications, and supervise and manage the professional behavior of professionals through the formulation and implementation of professional work regulations and professional ethics; The competent department of government construction or professional institutions shall implement registration management for the professional qualifications of professionals engaged in project supervision; Eliminate unqualified professionals through market competition mechanism and service reputation.