Thoughts On Promoting China Engineering Consulting Industry By Introducing International Practices

Along with the high-speed development of China's national economy in recent years, China consulting engineering industry representing 20,000 firms and 2 million employees, emerged as one of the fastest developing professions. The profession has played a vital role to ensure the success of the fix-asset investment with annual value over thousand or 10 thousand billion RMB. However, during the development, the engineering consulting firms and the industry encountered many problems. If these problems cannot be solved duly, they will not only seriously affects healthy and sustainable development of the engineering consulting industry of China, but also have adverse effects on the national economy.This paper studied the capacity building of engineering consulting industry by introducing international best business practices from the view of a trade association. In the study, documentation review research, surveys and case studies, comparison and interviews of experts were used. Firstly, the paper summarized the studies on relevant issues, and made an analysis and pointed out the areas, which they did not cover. Secondly, a survey of questionnaires on current status and problems of the engineering consulting firms and trade associations was dismissed among firms, experts and consulting engineers. 154 feedbacks were received. These feedbacks were summarized and analyzed, together with expert interviews, to find out the outstanding problems of the engineering consulting firms, industry and association.Thirdly, two case studies on two leading associations: FIDIC (International Federation of Consulting Engineers) and ACEC (American Council of Engineering Companies), were conducted to summarized their best practice in leading, promoting sustainable development and protecting of the interest of the engineering consulting profession.Finally, based upon the above analysis and study, the paper brought out the trade association could play its important role in promoting the development of China's engineering consulting industry. Through comparative analysis, this paper, taking CNAEC (China National Association of Engineering Consultants) as an example, brought out some recommendations and suggestions on capacity building of the association itself, such as increasing representation of the industry, number of member firms, membership subscription, qualification of the staffs of the association, and level of management. An comparison was make among FIDIC, ACEC and CNAEC to seek for the recommendations and suggestions for promoting China's engineering consulting industry: increasing the social recognition of the industry and image of consulting engineers by advocacy, promoting the beneficial policies, such as tax cut to the industry, promoting the establishment of the professional liability insurance system, strengthening training and studies on hot issues of the industry, in order to promote healthy and sustainable development of the engineering consulting industry of China.