Construction and installation project cost audit is also an important means to reduce project cost, save construction cost, improve economic efficiency and prevent corruption.

However, the construction and installation project cost audit is quite different from the general financial revenue and expenditure audit, involving all aspects of project site management such as project survey and design, bidding, contract, quality and progress control, measurement and payment, etc. It is highly professional. . In the face of complex situations, many materials to be reviewed, and controversial issues, the task is extremely arduous. It is extremely difficult to conduct a comprehensive cost audit on the authenticity and legality of the construction and installation project costs within a limited audit time.

Therefore, highlighting the key points and proper methods are the keys to the success or failure of project cost auditing.

Understanding the construction drawings is the premise of making a good budget. You must read the drawings carefully and carefully, so that you can understand every piece of information. After you have read the drawings and figured it out, you can make a complete set of project budgets~

Reasons for increasing project cost

In order to win the bid, the contractor often makes high-standard commitments to various contracting obligations such as construction period and quality when bidding, and generally adopts a low-price bidding strategy when bidding and quoting. Project changes, claims, etc., transfer risks to the owners as much as possible, and strive for more benefits. Due to the lack of performance of duties by the owner and the supervisory unit and the lack of experience in cost management, the project cost increased. According to the practical experience of project cost auditing in recent years, the problem of increasing the project cost in violation of regulations without strictly fulfilling the contract agreement is the most common situation in the current project settlement, and has the greatest impact on the project cost.

1. Signing a supplementary agreement in violation of the substantive terms of the original contract to increase the cost of the project

In order to win the bid, the contractor often makes various commitments in the bidding documents regarding all aspects of construction management, construction risks and delivered building products. However, during the implementation of some projects, for the convenience of management, the owners ignored the above commitments, and signed various supplementary agreements on objectives and quality management without raising the standard, increasing the project cost in the form of bonuses.

For example, a project contractor has made detailed commitments in the bidding documents for the specific completion time, quality requirements, excellent rate, and safe and civilized management of the construction site, and during construction, the owner has signed various contract obligations to be performed by the above contractor. Various forms of supplementary agreement on objectives, quality, safety and civilized management, agreed to issue various forms of bonuses, and increased the project cost in violation of the substantive terms of the original contract.

2. Not strictly fulfilling the special clauses of the contract, settle settlements according to the general clauses, and increase the project cost

For engineering projects in different industries, the state has issued contract templates and formulated general contract terms. However, when some projects signed the contract, according to the characteristics of the project itself, the general terms in the contract model were modified through the agreement of the special terms of the contract, but the settlement of the project did not follow the special terms and still used the general terms for settlement.

For example, the general terms of a certain industry stipulate that the main materials of the project are based on the price index announced by the state and the weights of different sub-items are settled according to the index method, and the specific terms of the project have modified the above regulations, and agreed to exclude the materials that belong to the policy price adjustment. In addition, the prices of other materials will not be adjusted, and the risk of material price increases shall be considered by the contractor in the bidding quotation. However, when the project is settled, all major materials have been adjusted in price, which violated the contract and increased the project cost. .

3. Through engineering changes and claims, the risks that should be borne by the contractor are transferred to the owner

Usually, the technical terms and commercial terms of the contract have clear agreements on the construction process, measures, process standards and relevant construction specification basis of each project list sub-item, and it is clearly stipulated that the relevant costs should be included in the bidding quotation. However, during the implementation process, the contractors made various changes and claims for various reasons to avoid their contractual obligations and increase the project cost.

If a certain engineering technical clause clearly stipulates various cooling measures that must be taken for mass concrete, the commercial clause also clearly stipulates that the various costs caused by these measures should be included in the bid price. However, the contractor did not consider the cost of concrete cooling in its bid price, and requested to change and increase the water cooling facilities and costs, which was an unreasonable increase in the project cost.

 4. The contractor has not fully fulfilled its contractual obligations, the project losses shall be borne by the owner, and the project cost will be increased

Generally, according to the contract, it is the contractual obligation of the contractor to deliver compliant and high-quality construction products. However, during the construction process, due to insufficient construction management, some sub-projects have quality problems, and the follow-up costs for these quality problems are often large. cost.

If a project is in the process of construction, due to inadequate construction technology and management, resulting in cracks in the main project, the owner ignores the contract price that includes all the costs for the completion, inspection, maintenance and repair of defects in the contract, and compensates the contractor. Crack repair costs, unreasonably increase the project cost.

5. The unit price of the change is not determined according to the principle of the contract terms, and the project cost is increased

There are clear regulations on the change of the unit price of the project list in the contract. Generally speaking: when there is a sub-item in the list of quantities applicable to the change, the unit price of the sub-item shall be adopted; In case of a project, the unit price or combined price of similar sub-items shall be referred to as the basis for changing the valuation within a reasonable range, and the unit price or combined price after the change shall be determined through negotiation between the supervisory unit and the contractor; there is no similar sub-item available in the bill of quantities. For reference, the new unit price or combined price shall be determined through negotiation between the owner of the supervision unit and the contractor. Due to the lack of strict control by the supervision unit, some changes in the unit price are not strictly based on the above principles to increase the cost of the project.

If a certain engineering design changes and adds a stainless steel ladder, the unit price of the change is not determined with reference to similar items in the bill of quantities, but is re-determined according to the quota to increase the project cost.

6. The principle of engineering quantity measurement violates the contract and increases the cost of the project

In the technical and commercial terms of the engineering contract for key national construction projects, the measurement principles for each sub-item of the bill of quantities are generally clearly stipulated. The project quantity is usually measured on a monthly or quarterly basis. After the project is completed, the project quantity of the sub-items of the list will be summarized and counted, and the contract will be settled after a certain procedure of review. The above measurement work is usually reported by the construction unit, and the supervision unit will review it according to the inspection and acceptance of the side station and the on-site visa data. However, due to the failure of some members of the supervision unit to perform their duties earnestly, some engineering quantity measurement principles have not been strictly implemented.

If a project contract clearly stipulates that the earthwork is required to be constructed in strict accordance with the design drawings, and the amount of excavation and filling beyond the designed excavation line will not be measured, and the bid price of the contractor should fully consider the risk of overexcavation. The members of the supervision unit made statistics according to the actual number of excavations, and measured the over-excavation and the amount of fill and transportation costs caused by it, resulting in an increase in the project cost.

Make full use of all means

Improve cost audit work efficiency

1. Use various auxiliary means to review the project quantity

According to the on-site visa acceptance materials, construction and completion drawings, and the calculation rules of engineering quantities formulated by different industries and engineering countries, it is the basic skill for auditors to engage in cost auditing to calculate the list of engineering quantities. However, due to the tedious, complex, and huge workload of the engineering quantity calculation process, as well as a large number of changes in the construction process, the engineering quantity calculation generally takes up a lot of audit time. The audit site spends a lot of time and manually calculates the engineering quantities according to the drawings, with little effect.

Because the calculation is based on the same drawing, the error rate is often not large when comparing the project settlement with the audit results. Therefore, when reviewing the project quantity, on-site inspection and acceptance materials such as on-site measurement, review of receiver records, and hidden records of the project are also required to review the as-built drawings. For example, for a greening project of a certain project, after on-site survey and measurement, it was found that the actual plant species, tree diameter and other elements were inconsistent with the as-built drawings, and there were errors in the as-built drawings.

2. Use the quantity analysis function of measurement software to find clues of illegal cases

The project cost is composed of labor cost, material cost and machine shift cost, as well as the contractor's management fee, profit and tax. It reflects the labor content and the quantity level of various materials when the contractor bids. Through the auxiliary materials such as the unit price analysis table in the bidding documents, and the quantity analysis function in the measurement software, it can quickly summarize how much labor and material are included in the settlement. Theoretical dosage of various materials. Comparing and analyzing the above theoretical dosage and actual dosage can be used as an important means of auditing engineering materials.

Conclusion:

There are still many types of problems in the project settlement, such as: the change of the project is not charged according to the charging standard determined in the original contract, the material price difference is only calculated as the positive difference without adjusting the negative price difference, and the contractor fails to deduct the liquidated damages according to the contract. and fines, actual settlement of materials, time-consuming material quantity and inaccurate purchase price, insufficient reasons for change to increase construction cost, insufficient calculation basis for slack workers’ claims, failure to achieve goals or improvement of standards, multiple project awards, repeated signing of contracts, etc.

Faced with the situation that there are many sub-items in the list of national key construction projects, a large number of changes, and complex project management, in order to fully discover problems in the cost audit and achieve better results, first of all, complete data must be obtained, and attention must be paid to various on-site management. The most important thing is to fully understand the contract agreement, strictly divide the rights and obligations of the owner and the contractor and the contract risks that they should bear.