Research On The Application Of Follow-up Auditing Of Construction Projects

As the foundation of the basic life of ordinary people, the construction of transportation has occupied an indispensable status in the daily life. There were numberless Chinese people migrating on the railway for study or a job in other province thirty years ago, and nowadays, the majority people in China are enjoying a relatively better living condition, which results in higher demand for transportation. Finally, the era of high-speed railway comes when the traditional train can not meet the demands of people who want faster, more comfortable and more convenient travel conditions.As a major infrastructure construction projects, the transportation construction always involves in a huge amount of projects investment. What is more, the longer time and the more links the projects involved make the transportation projects become the field of prone to corruption, bribery and other crimes. For a long time, the two methods---the traditional audit budget for the implementation and completion are all audit after the construction, which can just complete the responsibility of monitoring the economic. It is difficult to adapt to carry out a comprehensive audit of construction projects. Normally, the direct target of the audit during the construct should be the cost-saving and improve the economic benefits of the project, while the traditional post-audit have serious limitations in accomplishing the achievement above. Not only the post-audit can not solve projects’problems, but may cause more huge economic losses because of happening after constructing, which may lead to the consequences that the projects can not be completed smoothly.Therefore, when follow-up audit method appeared in the1980s in China, this new way of auditing caught the attention of many scholars. Although the follow-up audit is in the early stage in our country, and even there is fewer people who study the follow-up audit, and now in the audit field there is no theoretical system. What is worth to mention is that our country has attempted to carry out follow-up audit since21st century for major national policies and measures, major construction projects as well as sudden public matters:financial revenue and expenditure of the Beijing Olympic Games and the venue construction projects (2005); Sichuan Wenchuan earthquake recovery and reconstruction project (2009); Xiangjiaba Hydropower station (2009) and West-east gas transmission project (2009). All these constructions make us aware of the importance of follow-up audit, although there is no experience in applying this method in transportation construct. The implementation of these projects is not only related to the technical level of our engineering, but related to the national economy and the people’s livehood, major unexpected public matters and the situation of carrying out the policies. In addition, these large-scale constructions are prone to problems of corruption and bribery, which may lead to irreparable huge losses, and carrying out of follow-up audit can largely reduce the occurrence of these problems.The follow-up audit for the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway construction project in2009is the important practice for auditing of transportation. The audit began as early as the railway is planned to start in2008, the audit administration carried out3times audit, from2009to2011. In view of the importance of the high-speed railway and the several accidents happened when the construction began, the project had caused great concern in society. And the effect of implementing of follow-up audit during the project also caught the attention of public. Whether the audit administration reveal the problems timely during the implementing, and whether the administration urges the related departments to rectify and improve actively and timely. What is more, as a new auditing pattern, are there some irreplaceable advantages of follow-up audit that the traditional audit can not compare to? And are there some problems when carry out? How to improve this new pattern are also the contents that attract the attention of public.This article has five parts. The first one introduces the research background and the aim of studying, and also shows a brief introduction of the development in our country; the next part is the literature review section, which elaborates and summarizes the review of domestic and foreign scholars for the views and opinions of the follow-up audit, this part focused in the development of related laws and regulations and the situation of applying. The third part is the theoretical overview section of definition, characteristics, mode, the application and the goals of this new mode of audit. Next part is the analysis of Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway construction project, the analysis focuses in the process, content, arrangement, and shows an objective summary of the problems and achievements of this audit. Finally, with the results of the case studies of the railway construction, after analyzing the general characteristics of the construction project, it reaches the conclusion that the follow-up audit can be applied in other constructions in China. This part also includes the suggestions for improvement of the follow-up audit and the advice when it applied in the specific constructions.There are still minorities of scholars who do the research in follow-up audit nowadays and the focal point is the definition, characteristics, functions, goals and etc. This paper combined the theoretical and cases analysis, put forward the follow-up audit method into applying in other construction projects. All these reasons not only result in making it a newer topic, but also bring the situations of fewer references, and there is no solid theoretical foundation and other drawbacks. Therefore, this article may shows that there are not enough thorough understanding of the follow-up audit, and some ideas appear are superficial and not mature, it still needs more learning and research to improve my study.