Engineering supervision companies will become the leading force in promoting full-process engineering consulting services.

　　Currently, we are in a significant turning point in the entire human civilization, where the understanding of every industry is rapidly accumulating, and fields that were previously considered unrelated are gradually permeating and merging with each other. Against the backdrop of the national economic development shifting from demand-side to supply-side structural reform, the engineering supervision industry, as one of the five responsible entities in China's construction industry, has accumulated over 30 years of frontline practical management experience, with more than one million practitioners and over 200 industry enterprises with revenues exceeding 100 million yuan. There is reason and confidence to seize opportunities and resources, adapt to external changes, and innovate through transformation and upgrading, forming an 'industry cluster' that meets the diversified needs of the market, provides menu-style services, and connects the entire process, becoming the leading force in promoting comprehensive engineering consulting services.

　　1. The first-mover advantage of engineering supervision enterprises in transformation, upgrading, and innovative development.

　　2. Support from national policy.

　　Document No. 19 [2017] issued by the State Council, in the section on 'Improving the Organization Model of Engineering Construction,' briefly proposed the requirement for 'comprehensive engineering consulting' in just 181 words to all parties involved in engineering consulting services, including engineering supervision. The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development specifically issued Document No. 145 [2017] aimed at the engineering supervision industry, outlining clear opinions on the main goals, tasks, and organizational implementation for 'promoting the transformation, upgrading, and innovative development of the engineering supervision industry.' This indicates that the government has recognized the importance of reform and development in the engineering supervision industry, and the unfounded claims that the supervision system will be abolished and that supervision is unnecessary have been thoroughly debunked. Under the guidance of national policy, the engineering supervision industry and enterprises will embark on a new model of transformation, upgrading, and innovative development.

　　3. Potential market pressures and changes in demand.

　　The various qualification levels in the supervision industry are constantly changing every year, with comprehensive qualifications and firm qualifications being the two extremes of growth and decline. This indicates that competition at the high-end level of the industry will intensify, and comprehensive engineering consulting will bring in new entrants, introducing new resources and ideas into the existing competition. Meanwhile, the buyer's market is also changing, shifting from a sole pursuit of low prices to emphasizing the brand and service value of supervision. This is not only due to the transformation of local government economic development methods but also indicates that investors are moving from a simple pursuit of immediate returns to a greater focus on long-term investment returns. The engineering supervision market is filled with uncertainties, and it is precisely this vibrant and uncertain market that provides fertile ground for reform and innovation, offering the necessary external environment for engineering supervision enterprises to transform and upgrade.

　　4. The need for internal transformation within enterprises.

　　The characteristics of the industry, which include low income, high responsibility, and high risk, have led to a significant outflow of technical and management professionals from supervision enterprises. This has forced enterprises to hire personnel with only basic labor skills, further weakening their market bargaining power, lowering their management levels, and increasing the probability of safety and quality responsibility risks. This long-term state of blood loss and deficiency, these 'painful experiences,' suggest that for engineering supervision, which has undergone over twenty years of market economic baptism in China, the demand for changing its current unfavorable situation is gathering and expanding. The internal forces for transformation within enterprises will erupt through a certain opportunity, which is innovation and development, and this is the voluntary call of the enterprises.

　　Therefore, the path of transformation, upgrading, and innovative development for engineering supervision enterprises possesses favorable timing, geographical advantages, and harmony among people, which is unmatched by other consulting service industries. Engineering supervision enterprises that adapt to change and innovate have already established a first-mover advantage in leading comprehensive engineering consulting.

　　2. Favorable conditions for engineering supervision enterprises to become the leading force in comprehensive engineering consulting.

　　1. Most engineering supervision enterprises have flexible systems and mechanisms, with strong market adaptability.

　　China's engineering supervision system has drawn on foreign engineering management systems, standards, and frameworks, and has developed as a product within the context of a socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics. Most engineering supervision enterprises have been established for only about twenty years, without excessive historical constraints and burdens. Some enterprises have undergone system and mechanism reforms, with clear property rights structures and flexible business models. The original hierarchical management approach has been replaced by more efficient organizational management models, enabling them to quickly respond to changes in market demand and integrate quality resources through joint operations, asset restructuring, etc. They possess strong conditions in terms of systems and mechanisms to become knowledge-intensive, technology-composite, and management-intensive comprehensive engineering consulting enterprises.

　　2. Engineering supervision enterprises are participants and witnesses in the entire process of building product production.

　　Engineering supervision enterprises mainly engage in consulting work during the construction implementation phase, which is a critical stage of product production that consumes a lot of resources, is greatly affected by external environmental factors, and involves complex organizational coordination and management. Engineering supervision enterprises are long-term immersed in the construction production activities on-site, representing the owner and interacting with various suppliers providing different consulting services at different stages, serving the project goals. By coordinating resources from all parties, they manage the construction product production process to ensure the final quality of the construction products. Engineering supervision enterprises are participants and witnesses in the production of building products, while other consulting units are merely service providers for specific stages. Especially in recent years, engineering supervision enterprises have provided comprehensive project management and project agency services, and have ventured into and become knowledgeable in related consulting service fields and knowledge areas such as investment consulting, market positioning, bidding and procurement, engineering cost, green building, and property operation management. Engineering supervision enterprises have already developed the capability and conditions to extend into the upstream and downstream industries of engineering consulting.

　　3. The development of information technology has connected various professional sectors of engineering consulting.

　　The continuous development of information technology has led to profound changes across various industries. Engineering supervision enterprises can leverage big data, cloud computing, VR, AR, and BIM, along with developed internet resources, to reduce information loss, integrate data resources, and achieve information sharing through information management cloud platforms. This allows them to fully utilize their advantages in coordinated management, reduce human interference, and achieve the goal of connecting the 'entire process' and expanding the industrial chain through network information tools.

　　In the future, any enterprise will engage in cooperation in the field of comprehensive engineering consulting through joint ventures, restructuring, complementarity, and cross-holding of shares. At the same time, modern information technology, while 'fragmenting' traditional knowledge, provides the technical possibility for 'connecting' and 'reconstructing' the entire process of engineering consulting. Therefore, engineering supervision enterprises, positioned favorably at the product realization stage, can leverage favorable conditions such as market capital means, information technology conditions, and their own practical engineering capabilities to become the leading force in comprehensive engineering consulting.

　　3. Issues that engineering supervision enterprises need to overcome to become comprehensive engineering consulting leaders.

　　1. Engineering supervision enterprises need to break through the cognitive bottleneck regarding services and products.

　　Compared to other service industries, consulting services in the construction industry face strong policy and environmental constraints. I believe that with the deepening of the 'delegating power, streamlining administration, and improving services' reform in the construction industry, the market service entities are showing a trend of diversified development, with new business formats and service demands continuously emerging. The service forms that were originally established under the policy and environmental framework are undergoing new changes, and enterprises should re-examine their original understanding of services and products. This means changing the low-end, extensive business model that competes on price and quantity, reconstructing internal assessment and inspection mechanisms, forming a proactive open management model, introducing modular, standardized, and process-oriented service design concepts, and redefining existing supervision services. At the same time, it is essential to strengthen user demand research, focus on user experience, shift from 'passive response' to 'active storytelling,' establish customer relationship maintenance mechanisms, and create clear and logically sound service product and management lists to achieve customized, professional, and vocational service upgrades.

　　2. Engineering supervision companies need to break through the constraints of managing 'human resources'.

　　In the future, whether it is full-process engineering consulting or specialized engineering supervision, its characteristics may be marked by being knowledge-intensive, technology-composite, and management-intensive. Those who originally only possessed simple management skills and experience will gradually be replaced by information-based, specialized, and professional personnel. 'Responsibility' will be assigned a mission of practical significance, and 'experience' will have upgraded to comprehensive analytical and judgment capabilities. Managers will face new individuals who possess skills and knowledge different from the past. If they use some of the original methods, concepts, and incentive measures to manage, a series of troubles and confusions will arise. As the overall attractiveness of the industry increases, a group of highly professional talents with cross-disciplinary knowledge structures will join in, making human resource management increasingly important.

　　3. Choosing the right market positioning for engineering supervision companies is more important than blindly expanding.

　　"The future structure of supervision companies will definitely be a diversified model with multiple fields (specialties), multiple levels, each with core competitiveness and characteristics, combining comprehensive and specialized approaches, and complementing resource capabilities." The existing competitive landscape will be changed, and choosing the right market positioning and development direction for one's own company will be more important than blind competition. Measures such as building a credit system, qualification reform, and bidding system reform indicate that a non-differentiated bidding model will only waste public resources. In the future, a company's 'strengths' will be its characteristics, while the so-called 'weaknesses' will be compensated by a more flexible market resource allocation mechanism. Engineering supervision companies with core competitiveness will find it easier to become providers of full-process engineering consulting services through collaboration and complementarity.

　　Therefore, engineering supervision companies should redesign the upgrade path from service-product-new service, clearly define human resource management, dialectically understand strengths and weaknesses, break through the constraints of thinking and management, and complete the transformation and upgrade in the development process of full-process engineering consulting services.

　　Conclusion

　　Over the past thirty years, engineering supervision companies have not stepped out of the circles defined by the planned economy, even viewing the original circles as irreplaceable resources, distancing themselves from the larger ecological circle of the 'industry' without realizing it. However, the original barriers are now being broken, and the original boundaries are being eliminated. Investment consulting, business advisory, financial insurance, as well as design, cost estimation, auditing, construction, and property management within the industry are all interpenetrating and merging. I believe that in the future, the interdependence of the engineering consulting service industry will be higher, and more companies will rely on the 'industry' as a mother body, forming a 'full-process' industrial chain, adapting to the accelerated changes of the third economic globalization through internal organizational reform and external joint restructuring. Therefore, engineering supervision companies should take the current opportunity of transformation and innovative development to leverage their potential advantages and capabilities, overcome cognitive and developmental bottlenecks, actively integrate into the 'industry group', and become the leading force in promoting full-process engineering consulting.