1 Introduction

What is geotechnical engineering design? It is difficult for me to provide a complete and correct answer here. According to Baidu search, geotechnical engineering design refers to: after the completion of geotechnical engineering investigation activities, according to the construction requirements of the client and the geological, environmental characteristics and geotechnical engineering conditions of the site, the scheme design and construction drawing design of pile foundation engineering, foundation engineering, slope engineering, foundation pit engineering and other geotechnical engineering construction categories are carried out. Therefore, geotechnical design includes at least four major design contents. Limited by my ability and the length of the article, the following only takes foundation pit support design as an example to briefly introduce the competition of foundation pit support design fee quotations in recent years, so as to look forward to the prospects of the industry.

2 Analysis of Geotechnical Design Fees

In the 1990s, China's real estate industry began to start, and by the beginning of this century, the real estate industry entered a period of blowout development, until basically reaching its peak in 2010. During this period, a large number of deep foundation pit projects emerged, and related foundation pit support design industries were derived. Foundation pit support design belongs to the category of geotechnical design. The original design fee can refer to the national "Engineering Survey and Design Fee Standard (2002 Revision)", and the specific pricing is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1 shows the national geotechnical engineering design fee standard. From Figure 1, it can be seen that the design fee charged according to the 2002 version of the fee standard is relatively high, and basically meets the operation and profit requirements of design institutes. After more than ten years of development, today's prices and housing prices have risen incomparably higher than in 2002, even not in the same order of magnitude, but the current geotechnical engineering design fees have not increased, but are constantly decreasing. The following uses several foundation pit support project bidding quotations in Jiangsu Province in recent years listed in Figures 2 to 5 for reference analysis.
It is understood that Project 1 in Figure 2 is a project with a foundation pit support cost of about 37 million yuan, and the bidding adopts the method of winning the bid at the medium-low price. From Figure 2, it can be seen that the design fee of the winning unit accounts for about 0.35% of the cost. According to the 2002 version of the fee standard, a design fee of 1.85 million yuan can be charged, but the winning bid price is less than 10% of the fee standard, so it can be seen that the price war is fierce.
Figure 3 shows a project with a foundation pit support cost of about 60 million yuan, and the bidding adopts the method of winning the bid at the second lowest price. The final winning bid price is less than 1 million yuan. According to the 2002 version of the fee standard, the design fee should be 3 million yuan, and the winning bid price is also less than 30% of the standard price.
Figure 4 is a lowest-price bidding project. From Figure 4, it can be seen that the quotations of several design institutes vary greatly, and the difference between the highest price and the lowest price is almost 10 times, which indicates the fierceness of vicious competition and excessive competition.
Figure 5 is a lowest-price bidding project. From the quotations, the quotations of several units are relatively close, but there are also particularly high quotations, which shows the arbitrariness and uncertainty of design units' bidding quotations.
3 Brief Analysis of the Causes of Price Wars

From the perspective of geotechnical practitioners, most have bachelor's degrees or above, and doctoral degrees are also common. Logically, this industry belongs to a high-tech, high-IQ industry, and the labor everyone pays should have a higher return. However, from the above case analysis, it can be seen that the design fee charged is extremely low, only 10% of the 2002 standard, or even lower. The reasons for this situation are briefly analyzed as follows:
(1) Improvement of design calculation and drawing methods
With the development of computers, the geotechnical engineering design industry has become computerized in calculation and drawing. To put it plainly, it is parameter input, click calculation, view results, and even finite element has gradually changed into a menu-style calculation method. With the convenience of calculation and drawing, geotechnical design has also come down from the altar, gradually changing from mental labor to physical labor.
(2) Difficulty in design product innovation and patent protection
Foundation pit support design products are highly shareable, relatively low in technical content, and there are not many technical barriers for any design institute to retain and monopolize. Design drawings are easily imitated and copied, and patented products cannot be protected and promoted due to the influence of bidding price comparison. When a design institute designs a new method, its drawings quickly circulate in the industry, and other units compete to imitate them, or even directly copy them. Facing such a market, design institutes can only reduce prices to meet the construction unit's demand for low prices.
(3) Oversupply of designers
Because the market's bidding requirements for qualifications are too high. For example, second- and third-level foundation pits also require Grade A qualifications, so various survey and design institutes have to recruit designers to meet the personnel requirements for qualifications in order to improve and maintain their qualifications. In addition, since 2000, China's universities have expanded enrollment on a large scale, resulting in a continuous increase in the number of practitioners in the geotechnical industry, and its growth rate is far higher than the growth rate of the demand for geotechnical designers in construction projects. The entire industry has formed a buyer-dominated market, which directly opened the door to low-price competition.
(4) The review system has encouraged imitation and homogeneity
At present, in the market, there is no design institute or designer who cannot handle a project, because every larger project must go through expert review. In essence, experts provide technical consultation and guidance for designers, and most designs are basically modified according to expert opinions, so the risk is relatively small. Of course, in the past 10 years, foundation pit support technology has basically not had any major innovations, and it is still: slope cutting, soil nails, mixing piles (gravity dams); anchor rods, row piles, diaphragm walls.
(5) Construction units' psychology of pursuing low prices
In China, when purchasing any product, there is a general psychology of pursuing high quality and low price. Now most construction units have their own design teams. These people understand the situation of the design industry, so they consider less the reputation and service of design institutes and care more about the price of design fees. Price has also become the most critical factor for them to choose a design institute, so the bidding method of winning at the lowest price has emerged. This irrational consumer psychology has caused design institutes to "fight fiercely", and design fees have been reduced again and again.
(6) Imperfect market system and unreasonable industrial structure of geotechnical design
Theoretically, the emergence of an abnormal market behavior is due to the defects and imperfection of the system. On the other hand, due to various factors such as policies and management in China, there are few large group geotechnical engineering design institutes, and economies of scale have not been formed. Small and medium-sized enterprises account for the vast majority, and affiliation continues. In addition, products are similar, and the only way to gain market share is to engage in price wars.

4 Brief Analysis of the Industry Trend after the Price War

(1) In China, most geotechnical engineering design units compete not on service and products, but on the lowest design fee. Every geotechnical design unit hopes to obtain a larger market and more owners by reducing prices, which will inevitably lead to continuous reduction in profits of survey and design institutes, resulting in insufficient funds, reduced R&D level, outdated design products, poor service, and identical drawings. The direct result of low-price competition is to disrupt market order, affect the development of others, and then affect their own development. The ultimate result is to reduce the overall quality of geotechnical design and lead the industry to decline.
(2) Fierce and vicious competition reduces service integrity. Every unit and every designer works with the basic purpose of making money. The repeated reduction of design fees makes it necessary to meet rising prices and employee wages. Many design institutes adopt the method of cooperating with construction units during the design process to increase project cost and share the change fees. Such a result reduces the service quality and integrity of geotechnical engineering design, increases the suspicion and concerns of construction units, and affects the image of the entire geotechnical engineering design industry.
(3) With such low design fees, in order to obtain higher returns, every designer has to work on multiple projects at the same time. Under high-density work, designers cannot calm down to think about geotechnical engineering theories and new discoveries, let alone innovate. They can only copy the previous drawings this time and copy the current drawings next time, becoming drawing machines, and design institutes also become drawing institutes.
(4) Fierce competition in geotechnical engineering design, and geotechnical engineering design units and personnel are oversaturated. In order to survive, each unit is forced to join the ranks of low-price competition, thus forming a low-price competition model, causing design institutes to pursue low prices, making design drawings and products deviate from the normal track, falling into the vortex of low-price competition, a vicious circle, and heading toward destruction.

5 Conclusions and Recommendations

The solution to the price war in geotechnical engineering design requires not only the efforts of the entire geotechnical engineering industry, but also the joint efforts of relevant management departments and even construction units. Otherwise, the outcome will be: winning the bid tragically, losing the bid miserably. If this continues, it will gradually drift away and disappear in the clouds, just as the Samyukta Agama says: When this exists, that exists; when this arises, that arises; when this does not exist, that does not exist; when this ceases, that ceases.