In the blink of an eye, the days of wearing masks have lasted for more than two years, and from 2020 onwards, we seem to be witnessing history every day.
The outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the current global death toll reached 6 million; the K12 market market value evaporated nearly one trillion yuan, the education and training industry officially ended; the Internet winter fell, the wave of layoffs continued to emerge; the Russian-Ukrainian war ignited, the world situation is constantly tense.....
However, the construction industry has not stopped, leading housing enterprises thunderstorms, veteran builders Nantong First Construction, Six Construction bankruptcy and reorganization, a number of design institutes significantly reduced wages...
Buffett said, "When the tide recedes, you don't know who's swimming naked." Under the grand background narrative of the times, even if they are in the top track or the benchmark enterprise, every strivers are "insignificant".
We have to take a new look at and think about the future of the construction industry and the survival of ordinary people.
Why are these problems in the construction industry? Must be coincidence? What are the big trends behind them? This article may give you some answers!
01
Changing times: changes from increments to stocks
Let's look at the Internet industry first:
In the past two or three decades, the Internet industry has relied on a strong demographic dividend, opportunities created by the state, and the general trend given by the times, to obtain explosive growth, and has also created many giant factories.
WeChat daily active more than 1 billion, WeChat Pay connects more than 10 million merchants, leveraging 520 billion consumption; after 13 years of Tmall Double 11 Carnival, 2021 finally fixed 540.3 billion, which reflects the consumption vitality of 1.4 billion Chinese and the country's economic resilience; Douyin Daily Active 600 million, becoming the second largest traffic camp after WeChat.
However, any boom has a cycle.
In the first quarter of last year, Ali suffered its first quarterly loss since its listing; Ant Financial terminated its listing; ByteDance suffered a bottleneck in development, Douyin's growth was weak, and today's headlines were on the verge of loss; Baidu's advertising business growth slowed down.
In the second half of the Internet, products are becoming more and more homogeneous, technology is also frequently encountering bottlenecks, and the demographic dividend has gradually peaked, and it seems that everyone's life is not very good. The Internet industry understands the value and significance of stocks!
Next, let's talk about the construction industry:
From the perspective of national policies, "housing is not speculation" has been written into the government work report for 3 consecutive years. This year is no exception, just held at the two sessions, Premier Li Keqiang reiterated the positioning of "housing and not speculation", stabilizing land prices, stabilizing housing prices, stabilizing expectations, and promoting the virtuous circle and healthy development of the real estate industry because of the city's policies.
From the perspective of the current situation of housing construction, after more than 20 years of housing commercialization marketization, a large number of new houses have been built, and the per capita housing area has reached 40 square meters, which is equivalent to the level of developed countries in Europe; although the output value of the housing construction industry is growing every year, the area started has not changed much, and the completed area is basically stable. The scale of new real estate houses is becoming increasingly saturated and has reached a more mature stage.
It can be seen that the current construction industry as a whole has reached its peak, and it is difficult to have explosive increments in the future.
In short, no one can escape the fate of the cycle, when the enterprise enters the stock era, when it is difficult for the enterprise to create profits, it will naturally try to reduce the cost, and it is not surprising that the layoffs and salary cuts will be reduced!
02
Reinventing Competition: Progress from Malice to Fairness
Since the reform and opening up, the construction industry has made great achievements, but the impression is still low-end extensive, chaotic, large but not strong.
Let's take a look at what kind of competition chaos is there in the construction industry?
➤ Qualification affiliation:
Freezing three feet is not a cold day, and the qualification has been attached to the construction industry for a long time. It is not that whoever is strong can take the project, but who has the qualifications can take the project, the reality is that as long as there is money, any qualification can be obtained.
In the final analysis, the qualification is a piece of paper, and anyone can use this paper to pick up the project; to you, to him, all the same; there is no shortage of first-level, special-level, and there may be no bidder's company.
In this way, enterprises that do not have the corresponding capabilities receive a large number of projects, and accidents and safety problems may occur.
➤ Low price winning bid:
In the process of bidding, everyone does not pay attention to the quality of the quality, but more concerned about the price. The low price has depressed the profit margin to a certain extent, and it is inevitable to cut corners in order to protect the capital, and a series of quality and safety problems may occur in the later stage.
At the same time, it disrupts the order of the industry, corrupts the market atmosphere, and drives out good money with bad money. Such a vicious circle will eventually seriously affect the benign development of the entire industry.
➤ Illegal contracting:
In the construction industry, there has always been an unwritten status quo, that is, those who can do engineering cannot receive engineering, and those who will not do engineering have a large number of hands.
The phenomenon of layer-by-layer contracting is also not uncommon, the project has changed hands many times, and the contractors of each layer have to take away a part of the profits, and in the end, the real construction units get very little.
This is already very common in the construction industry, and although some regulations have been introduced, they still do not work.
➤ Bid-rigging crosstalk:
Bid-rigging and collusion are also common phenomena in the construction industry, both of which are illegal.
Bid-rigging is also called collusion bidding, several construction unit bidders agree with each other, unanimously raise or undercut prices, through malicious competition, exclude other bidders, so that a bidder wins the bid, and the partnership seeks improper benefits from it. Collusion refers to the collusion between bidding construction units or between bidding units and bidding units to deceive and win the bid.
This has seriously disrupted the market order and hindered the healthy development of the industry. In the long run, corruption and bribery will also be involved, which is extremely harmful to society and cannot be ignored.
At present, the state is focusing on carrying out drastic reforms in the construction industry, gradually moving from malice to fairness.
03
Rule Change: The Development from Barbarism to Rationality
Everyone should have heard of the "unspoken rules", every industry has it, but the way and form of presentation are not the same.
The so-called "unspoken rules", in fact, everyone knows it, but does not say it, so as to engage in some gray trading behavior under certain conditions.
The construction industry is no exception. Like what:
➤ Custody by penalty
As we all know, in the construction of engineering projects, problems often receive some stop orders or fine notices, which are easy to abuse and can sometimes play a certain deterrent effect. However, the suspension of work fines is not a panacea, the symptoms are not cured, and the penalty can be obtained for a while, and the penalty cannot be punished for a lifetime. At worst, it will affect the progress of the project, and if it is heavy, it will affect the credibility of the project.
➤ Commercial bribery
In the process of construction enterprises doing engineering, not everything is smooth, often according to the rules of "acquaintances are good to do things", you need to be familiar with unfamiliar units, output some benefits, in order to get the support of relevant parties.
➤ Obsessed with relationships
Too many supervisors, technicians, rely on their relatives to work in the construction company! There is no positive effect on engineering project management at all! Instead, it affects the development of the company and the progress of the project.
➤ Professional vulnerabilities
The drawing set is too serious, and the loopholes found by the drawing triage are also very many! The drawings obtained in the final construction will generally have the following factors: the imagination of the owner + the flattery of the leader nodding his head and waist + the compromise of the general reasoning and the temptation of the main person.
Sooner or later, such a barbaric way of survival will be eliminated, from top to bottom, design, supervision, general contracting, subcontracting and construction teams must be professional in order to create high-quality projects!
With the control of the state and related departments, it is believed that the future of the industry will continue to move towards rationality.
04
Digital Transformation: The Evolution from Tradition to Digital
Digitalization should be no stranger to everyone, from individuals, enterprises to countries are constantly moving forward under the wave of digitalization, this trend is irreversible, once it starts, it will not end.
It can also be seen from the Baidu index that the popularity of the term "digital transformation" has shown an overall upward trend in the past 10 years, especially in the past 5 years.
Digitalization is not a multiple-choice question for businesses, but a mandatory question. It is both an opportunity and a challenge for countless traditional businesses.
Speculators hype "digitalization" as an outlet. For long-termists, digital transformation is not achieved overnight, but step by step, step by step. It is necessary to innovate from various aspects such as corporate culture, organizational structure, and management system.
Midea has transformed the original production line through robot technology, and the total number of employees in midea has been reduced from nearly 200,000 in 2011 to less than 100,000 in 2017, continuously improving the level of refined management and operational efficiency.
Red-collar garment adopts the Internet + operation mode, carries out flexible and personalized customization transformation, affects the behavior of the production end through data prediction, and changes the traditional production relationship model.
Haier Group's implementation of the "Rendanheyi" model has revitalized Haier Company, and now it has become an ecological enterprise leading the era of the Internet of Things.
Under the guidance of digitalization, enterprises can show strong resilience and potential to find new growth points.
How should construction companies transform?
➤ Start by setting goals
Through the interpretation of business strategy, the goals, vision and value proposition of digital transformation are output, which is an important premise direction to determine the success of transformation. Everything in the wrong direction is in vain. Each business and department should clarify its own transformation goals, vision, and design relevant solutions and strategies to find a successful path to transformation.
➤ Set up the scene next
According to the goals and visions, we will work with various business departments to design digital scenarios, sort out the technologies and resources required for each scenario, optimize the process according to the needs of the scenarios, improve efficiency, define digital success criteria, and finally achieve the desired results.
➤ Finally ensure landing
Formulate the landing plan and steps of digital transformation, including the implementation of projects, the promotion of processes, organizational structure adjustments, internal system optimization and cultural precipitation, etc., with business as the center, drive the promotion of digital transformation, only when every link and sector is digitized, can the success of enterprise digital transformation be achieved.
Of course, this is only the theoretical basic process of digital transformation, and it is not possible to successfully transform after reading these few lines.
Digital transformation is a long-term system engineering, which needs to take into account all aspects, technology, organization, process, talent and culture, etc. each of which must be done to the extreme, it is impossible to put it in place in one step, and it requires patience and gradual progress.
The trend of digitalization has become unstoppable, and it can only meet its arrival, adapt to its changes, and empower the transformation and upgrading of its own enterprises.
05
Endgame judgment: from the present to the future
Sometimes companies tend to focus on the immediate interests and ignore the beauty of the distant places. This is because they all ignore one kind of thinking, and that is the endgame thinking.
No one in this world can perfectly predict the future correctly, how to develop in the future, but the future is not without traces, the world to today is also in different probabilities to present different states, how to better predict the future, guide the current strategy to be optimal?
That's why we want to learn endgame thinking.
What is endgame thinking? In the process of personal and enterprise development, there are always some long-term and complex businesses, but often the ultimate goal is forgotten in the process of doing it. "Endgame thinking" is to always remind us to see what the final state and goal we want to achieve, so as not to lose our way and keep moving forward.
The relationship of the future is no longer a link between enterprises but a supply chain existence.
Future collaborations are no longer between individuals, but between ecological organizations.
The future OF technology is no longer a single software PK, but a contest of middle office capabilities.
This is the prediction and judgment of the future, who can understand first, who can seize the opportunity.
Li Fuhe, chairman of Panchengde, once said: The future construction industry will be composed of single-digit super large platforms, double-digit industry leaders, and tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of small and micro enterprises.
Who you want to be, then you have to make the corresponding efforts. Less of the current fur scramble, more of the next 10 years of long-term thinking. Only then can businesses live longer.