The management process of engineering construction projects can be roughly divided into four stages. The first stage is the preparation stage before the project starts, which mainly includes project investigation and demonstration, project establishment, project design, bidding, contract signing and construction preparation. The second stage is the whole construction period, and the main work is construction, from earthwork excavation to main support. The third stage is the project completion acceptance delivery stage, that is, organizing the project acceptance according to the design requirements; Engineering settlement; Handle project delivery. The fourth stage is that the project enters the operation period, that is, the finished products of the project are put into the market, and the recovered funds can produce economic benefits, achieve the expected investment objectives, and realize the business cycle of "monetary funds-construction funds-finished products funds-monetary funds".
Through audit practice, the author believes that the current situation and difficulties of engineering construction project audit mainly include the following three aspects:
(A) the knowledge and professional structure of audit department personnel is single, which is difficult to meet the requirements of comprehensive audit of engineering construction projects.
The coverage of engineering construction projects is wide and the construction process is complex, which determines the comprehensiveness of audit requirements, involving both financial management and engineering construction management. It is necessary to audit the results, that is, to review the source and application of funds for construction projects, to evaluate the authenticity and compliance of financial accounting and accounting basic work, and to audit the construction process, to find out the connecting parts, missing parts and weak links of various management processes of construction projects, to put forward improvement opinions and suggestions, and to evaluate them. In the process of engineering construction cost formation, by tracking and monitoring the labor cost, material cost, machinery cost and other expenses, the audit gate will be moved forward, and the audited unit will be urged to find and correct the loss and waste in time, and the performance of the economic responsibility of the project executor will be evaluated according to the rectification results; Auditing in the project completion settlement can further verify all the actual construction investment expenditures in the whole construction process of the construction project, verify the actual balance of funds and other funds, and provide a basis for evaluating the overall benefits and effects of the project. The audit content is comprehensive and professional. In addition, due to the imperfect laws and policies of China's construction market and supporting management, and the scattered supervision and restraint measures, it is difficult for internal audit department personnel to adapt to the comprehensive audit requirements of engineering construction projects. In practice, auditors focus on financial audit, lack the corresponding professional knowledge and experience of project management, ignore the problems existing in the process of project construction management, and are limited to a single knowledge structure, resulting in incomplete and inappropriate audit conclusions.
(2) Fraud in construction projects is more concealed.
The whole process of project initiation, construction, completion and delivery involves many stakeholders, and any one of them may gain illegitimate interests and engage in graft in a certain process or procedure. There may be various fraudulent means in engineering construction projects, such as the construction personnel taking advantage of their positions to obtain information and accepting commercial bribes such as kickbacks and commissions in material procurement and contract conclusion; In order to deal with improper expenses, the internal management colluded with each other, or the construction party colluded with the construction party to sign a false contract, prepare a false budget and final accounts and purchase invoices for cash, resulting in ineffective internal control; Other projects have not been settled for a long time, and illegal expenditures are listed as project expenditures, so it is difficult to guarantee the project benefits. Fraud in the process of engineering project construction is more hidden than other economic projects, and it is difficult to find loopholes in form. There are seemingly legal and complete engineering materials, qualified procedures and even formal invoices, which increase the difficulty of engineering construction project audit. Therefore, exposing fraud is the difficulty and focus of engineering construction project audit.
(C) The audit of engineering construction projects currently lacks a systematic and complete evaluation standard system.
At present, different evaluation indexes are usually used in different stages of construction project audit activities. The preliminary audit of construction projects is mainly based on qualitative evaluation, which mainly evaluates the compliance of project investigation procedures, the scientificity and rigor of demonstration, and whether there are decision-making mistakes. The construction period and operation period of engineering construction projects focus on quantitative evaluation. The evaluation indicators during the construction period mainly include: investment completion, average capital occupation, construction period, quality qualification rate, accident rate, loss rate, settlement reduction rate, etc. Operating period evaluation indicators mainly include: product market share, cost profit rate, sales profit rate, investment profit rate, investment profit rate, investment payback period, etc.
Most of the above quantitative indicators are financial analysis indicators. Judging from the use situation, financial indicators alone can not truly reflect the economic and social benefits of construction projects. Because China's engineering construction project audit is still in the stage of exploration and development, there are few mature things to learn from and there is no systematic and complete evaluation standard system, which restricts the development of engineering construction project audit.
In view of the above situation in the audit of engineering construction projects, the author suggests starting from the following three aspects:
(1) Establish the working idea of effective combination of project management audit and financial audit, and make rational use of the work achievements of relevant departments.
Because the audit of engineering construction projects puts forward higher requirements for auditors' skills and audit experience in mastering financial and engineering knowledge, it is very important to improve the professional quality of existing auditors and expand their knowledge, and at the same time do a good job in rational division and coordination of finance and engineering. Before the implementation of the audit project, it is necessary to comprehensively analyze the professional requirements of the engineering construction project, reasonably arrange the division of labor and cooperation between the financial audit and the engineering management audit personnel, and lay the corresponding professional foundation for the smooth implementation of the engineering construction project audit.
The audit content of engineering construction projects involves different levels of engineering and technical fields. In order to make proper and high-quality audit evaluation, cooperation with relevant departments is particularly important. If necessary, we can rely on their work results, mainly in the following aspects: first, we can cooperate with the project price evaluation department, or directly obtain the project approval value from the project price evaluation department, or entrust an intermediary agency with corresponding qualifications to audit; The second is the cooperation with the engineering supervision department, which is the legal department that appraises and supervises the quality and progress of engineering construction, and can consult when encountering engineering technical problems; Thirdly, cooperating with the project acceptance department and consulting the acceptance data will help to clarify the audit content and check the missing parts; Fourth, strengthen communication and cooperation with the engineering, finance, logistics and other departments of the audited unit, fully understand the engineering construction projects, capture real information, convince people with mutual respect, and do not easily draw conclusions without sufficient reasons.
(2) The common methods of fraud audit in engineering construction projects.
Because there is always a difference between falsely reporting fraudulent matters and normal business, the audit should pay special attention to the problems such as the cost of a single project seriously exceeding the budget without special circumstances, the use of construction funds under various pretexts and extravagance and waste, and make a substantive review. The following are several methods commonly used in the fraud audit of engineering construction projects:
1. Observe.
It means that auditors conduct on-the-spot inspection of the audited construction project, obtain first-hand audit data as audit evidence through seeing is believing, and identify the authenticity of the project through on-the-spot observation is one of the most commonly used methods in the construction project audit, which is also an important link in the audit process, because the implementation of the engineering quantity needs on-the-spot observation and calculation, and then compares it with the engineering settlement book, so as to find out whether there is fraud in falsely reporting the engineering quantity.
2. Calculation method.
It is auditors who check or calculate data in engineering construction projects. The purpose of this method is to verify the correctness of the final accounts data and calculation results provided by the audited entity. When the calculation results are inconsistent with the records of the audited entity, auditors should generally verify the calculation process again. When necessary, communicate with the relevant departments and personnel of the audited entity. If the communication is inconsistent, the auditor's calculation results shall prevail.
3. Tracking method.
It is to audit according to the capital flow, and check whether there are problems such as "running, running, dripping and leaking" in the process of capital flow by tracking all links of capital flow to ensure the legal and effective use of construction funds. The audit method of tracking capital flow has obvious audit effect in audit practice, and every link of capital flow is within the control of auditors. In the specific audit business, auditors determine samples by sampling, complete the process of sample audit to obtain evidence of fraud, and then decide whether to abandon or expand the audit samples for further substantive inspection.
4. Review the review methods.
It uses the professional technical knowledge and experience of auditors to review, calculate, verify, analyze and infer all kinds of information provided by audited units and collected by auditors on the basis of reviewing the authenticity, integrity, legality and consistency of the information provided by them. For example, in the audit of project settlement, the calculation results of engineering quantity are reviewed, and whether there is over-calculation, recalculation and missing calculation of engineering quantity, and whether there is human error or over-calculation. Through the rational examination, analysis and judgment of the auditors, the probative audit conclusion is made.
5. Comparative analysis method.
It is an analytical method to compare the budget or planned number with the actual number from a quantitative point of view and analyze the similarities and differences between them. In the project audit, the comparative analysis method runs through the whole audit activity and occupies an important position in the audit analysis. For example, the project commissioning audit, through the comparative analysis of the feasibility study report data and actual data of the completed project and the actual verification of the project effect, determines whether the expected goal of the project has been achieved; Another example is the project settlement audit, which compares the actual measurement and quota calculation of the project cost with the pre-settlement value provided by the audited unit to determine the authenticity and correctness of the project cost. The commonly used method in comparative analysis is ratio method, which can be expressed by percentage, absolute ratio and relative ratio. According to different comparison objects, it can be divided into vertical comparison, horizontal comparison, planned and actual comparison, whole and local comparison and comprehensive comparison.
(3) Establish a scientific, standardized and authoritative construction project audit evaluation index system as soon as possible on a reasonable basis.
Different departments have different economic management functions, and the specific application of evaluation indicators in the audit is also very different. Therefore, we should be guided by theoretical innovation, strengthen theoretical research in the field of engineering construction project audit, speed up the development and application of audit techniques and methods, solve technical problems in engineering construction project audit, and establish a unified, standardized, scientific and authoritative engineering construction project audit evaluation index system as soon as possible on the basis of drawing lessons from foreign evaluation indicators and existing research results.
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