Recently, the official website of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development released the "2022 National Engineering Survey and Design Statistical Bulletin." In 2022, about 28,000 engineering survey and design enterprises nationwide participated in the statistics. The total operating revenue of enterprises with survey and design qualifications nationwide amounted to 8.9 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.1%, with the growth rate down 9.8 percentage points from the previous year; net profit was 279.43 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.8%. Among these:

Engineering survey revenue was 107.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 2.3%;

Engineering design revenue was approximately 562.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 2%;

Engineering general contracting revenue was 4.5 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 21.1%. 12.6%, with the growth rate down 8.5 percentage points;

Revenue from other engineering consulting business was 101.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.2%, with the growth rate down 14.6 percentage points.

The following is a statistical analysis of the basic data of qualified engineering survey and design enterprises nationwide in 2022 from five aspects: overall enterprise situation, personnel situation, business situation, financial situation, and scientific and technological activities.

Overall Enterprise Situation

Since 2016, the number of engineering survey and design enterprises participating in the statistics has generally shown a fluctuating upward trend, with a slight decline after 2017; the number of enterprises decreased by 6.4% in 2018, stabilized and rebounded in 2019, and increased to 28,000 in 2022.

Personnel Situation: Number of Personnel Reaches a Historic High

Since entering the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, the number of personnel in the engineering survey and design industry has generally shown a fluctuating growth trend, with the largest increase in 2017, followed by a trend of slight growth; by 2020, the number of personnel had decreased by 5% year on year, which also reflects the worsening brain drain in the industry. In 2021, the number of personnel increased by 9.8% to 4.833 million, and in 2022 it increased slightly by 1% to 4.88 million.

Business Situation: Growth of Newly Signed Contracts Accelerates

In 2022, the total value of newly signed contracts for the four businesses of engineering survey, engineering design, engineering general contracting, and other engineering consulting by enterprises with survey and design qualifications was 7.6 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.7%, with the growth rate up 6.7 percentage points; from 2017 to 2022, the average annual compound growth rate of newly signed contracts for the four businesses was 12.8%.

Financial Situation: Net Profit Growth Slows, Profit Margin Declines

The average annual compound growth rate of operating revenue in the survey and design industry was 20.3%, and during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period the average annual compound growth rate of operating revenue was 21.4%. However, the growth rate of the industry's net profit did not increase. The industry's profit margin fell from 6.5% in 2011 to 3.5% in 2020. In 2021, the net profit margin further dropped to 2.9%, and in 2022 it rebounded to 3.1%.

Since 2016, net profit has generally shown an upward trend; in 2021, net profit declined for the first time, decreasing by 1.4% year on year, mainly due to the economic environment and the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, net profit returned to a growth track with a growth rate of 12.8%, reaching 279.4 billion yuan.

Business Structure: Share of Engineering General Contracting Revenue Rebounds

The share of engineering general contracting revenue has shown a fluctuating upward trend. From the changes in the business structure of the survey and design industry from 2016 to 2022, the proportion of design business in operating revenue decreased year by year from 10.8% in 2016 to 6.3% in 2022; the proportion of engineering general contracting business in operating revenue rose from 32.4% in 2016 to 52.4% in 2019, becoming the largest main business, but in 2020 it fell again to 45.6%, even lower than the proportion in 2017; it rebounded starting in 2021 and rose to 50.6% in 2022.

Scientific and Technological Activities: Fruitful Scientific and Technological Achievements

Since 2016, expenditures on scientific and technological activities in the engineering survey and design industry have increased year by year, reaching 259.42 billion yuan in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 2.1%, with the growth rate down 34 percentage points from the previous year. From 2016 to 2022, the average annual compound growth rate was 22.3%. During the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, the proportion of expenditures on scientific and technological activities in operating revenue remained at 2.3%–2.6%; in 2021 this indicator increased to 3%, and in 2022 it dropped to 2.9%.

The cumulative number of patents and cumulative proprietary technologies has risen year by year, and intellectual property accumulation is substantial. As of 2022, the cumulative number of patents and proprietary technologies in the survey and design industry was 473,000 and 86,000, respectively, 3.6 times and 2 times the corresponding two indicators in 2016.