Industry classifications

Meeting the requirements of classifications of economic activity is a key feature of the consulting engineering industry. This is because most of the industry's work is for the common good so governments need to know the extent and depth of activities in order to adjust policies and regulations appropriately.

National, regional and international statistics agencies routinely request the consulting engineering industry to submit proposals for adjustments to classification schemes.

EFCA coordinates these inputs at the regional (European Union) and international levels.

The United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSD) organises the development and implementation of the international classifications of economic activities (ISIC) and of products and services (CPC) which are the basis for the System of National Accounts (SNA) that is implemented in the European Union (EU) as the European System of Accounts (ESA).

The UNSD annual meeting in March 2021 decided to complete an update of the 2008 SNA by March 2025 according to the usual approximately 15-year cycle.

This process is necessarily accompanied by an updating of ISIC and the CPC and of all the main national accounts and classifications that depend upon ISIC and the CPC.

Eurostat will therefore follow shortly after the SNA update with an updated ESA that will be mandatory for EU Member States.

EFCA has responded to a Eurostat request for proposals for an updated NACE economic activity classification that is the EU's equivalent to ISIC. The aim is to ensure that these proposals are taken by UNSD for the SNA 2025 and for the ISIC update (see blog post).

The FIDIC-EFCA Consulting Engineering Industry Survey uses investment and supply-use tables taken from national accounts to obtain the current and forecast demand and fee levels for consulting engineering services in countries and regions that have adopted the SNA.

Given this close link between classification and estimates of demand, input to the classification updates and news about progress is reported by the FIDIC-EFCA survey website /temporarily unavialbale while servers are being upgraded).