Since the commercial and financial challenges the middle east encounter over the last decades, the words “value engineering” have been bandied about frequently, without due regard for what they actually mean.
Definitely, there is a crucial need to ensure projects are built within budget, and without this due consideration, projects would very likely fail…
However, through the proper application of value engineering; it is still possible to provide a higher quality design with greater reliability and flexibility while not just focus on the initial build costs containment, but in the light of optimizing the whole life cycle costing.
This standard engineering approach is based on the following steps:
- Information Gathering – Obtain through an understanding of the project and the stakeholder requirements.
- Function Analysis – Analyze the project’s elements and associated components in order to understand and clarify the required functions and identify specific value improvements.
- Creativity – Identify the possible ideas and alternatives to achieve the required objectives of the project.
- Evaluation – Select the optimum solutions with the great opportunity to enhance the overall project value.
- Development – Develop the selected alternatives into proposals for change in order to improve value.
- Presentation – Present the value engineering recommendation to the project stakeholders.
Value engineering is a process typically inherent to all design phases and preferably undertaken during the concept design stage specially for large-scale projects.
Value engineering works best when the value engineering team is brought in alongside the base design team and the exercise is undertaken in a collaborative environment. This ensures that efforts are made to discuss ideas, which promotes greater synergies to the project as a whole.
Eng. Ahmed Maged has had the good fortune to undertake many value engineering exercises led to the project greatly benefiting optimizations proposed.