The Technique of Value Engineering (VE) in Architecture

Developed by Aikaterini Deli

Value Engineering (VE) is a sequence of procedures aiming to meliorate the value of the final product by having a better management through the overall steps, always considering the cost. Value Engineering is an organizing tool with origins from the science of Project Management which had been used during the World War II by “General Electric Co” and nowadays it is an approach commonly used for planning building projects. This technique constitutes one of the main processes of the Value Methodologies.

Most of the companies follow this technique in order to minimize the cost but not the basic function of the product. In the architectural field, the engineers are facing plenty of composite projects which have to meet the needs and requirements of their clients and also being in time and in budget. For this reason, the VE technique is preferable from large architectural offices because of the status of their clients. The bigger the project, the greater the need for examining continuously the budget through the design process. In a nutshell, Value Engineering is an organized creative review of the needs and requirements of the client which are satisfied through the functions of the product, always underlining its quality and its low life cycle cost.

This article will deliver an analysis of this management tool and will focus on the different stages that the team has to pass throught, the benefits on applying this technique and also its limitations. The article may be read by both practitioners and academics as a guide for applying the technique of Value Engineering.

Definitions

In this chapter some definitions of the Value Engineering will be developed for a better understanding of this term.

Miles (1972): A discipline action system, attuned to one specific need: accomplishing the functions that the customer needs and wants at the lowest cost.

Society of American Value Engineers (SAVE) International: The Value Methodology (VM) is a systematic and structured approach for improving projects, products, processes, services and organizations. VM, which is also known as Value Engineering, is used to analyze and improve manufacturing products and processes, design and construction projects, business and administrative processes, and both public and private sector services and organizations.

Sievert, R. W. (1991) - Project Management Institute: Value engineering is a function-oriented and multidisciplinary approach for planning building projects using a multi-disciplined team to identify and reduce unnecessary costs and poor performance, while maintaining product quality.

Investopedia: Value engineering is a systematic, organized approach to providing necessary functions in a project at the lowest cost. Value engineering promotes the substitution of materials and methods with less expensive alternatives, without sacrificing functionality. It is focused solely on the functions of various components and materials, rather than their physical attributes. Value engineering is also called value analysis.

Big Idea

The idea was born at General Electric Co in the 1940s by the engineers Lawrence Miles, Jerry Leftow, and Harry Erlicher. The combination of the high demand of products with the lack of raw materials, created the need for seeking alternative materials which will be in the same cost and function levels with the first ones. This process was named Value Engineering. Nowadays, Value Engineering is consisted by a multi-disciplined team which purpose is to identify and reduce unnecessary costs and poor performance, while maintaining product quality. Functional Analysis System Technique (FAST) diagrams illustrate the phases. The value engineering team has four to six members with complementary expertise in different disciplines.

This tool can be applied at any step in a project, from the pre-workshop preparation to the post-workshop implementation. The Society of American Value Engineers (SAVE) was formed in 1959 as a professional society dedicated to the advancement of VE through a better understanding of the principles, methods, and concepts involved. According to the Value Methodology Standard from the SAVE and the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) standard E1699-14, Value Engineering can be described by the following 8-phases:

1. Preparation Phase
2. Information Phase
3. Function Analysis Phase
4. Creative Phase
5. Evaluation Phase
6. Development Phase
7. Presentation Phase
8. Implementation Phase

Application

The tool is supposed to be used by following the below phases.

Preparation Phase

understanding the project, first touch

In this step it is important for the value engineering team to be familiar with the project, which means that the team has to understand the need and the specifications that the customer demands and wants for the final product, especially what is to be studied and when.

Information Phase

gathering of data

In this phase, the team has to research and investigate deeper about the project. Some parts have to be clear now, like the functions of each element and the design procedure. The deeper the research, the better the outcome and the understanding and the more comfortable the team is. The investigation could be in the fileds of "Engineering", "Materials", "Costs", "Manufacturing" and "Scheduling". Some really good and helpful questions are the following:

# How
# What
# Why
# Where
# When

Function Analysis Phase

analysis of the project, clarification of the purpose

In this step, the team defines the served by the building functions, some of the them are primary and the remaining secondary. The difference between them is that the first one reveals absolutely the purpose of the building while the second one describes an added value in this.

The Verb - Noun Approach

The Verb - Noun Approach is well known between the value engineering team, as they set the questions "What this function does?" and "What is this fuction?", which are aswered by a verb and noun respectively. Some advantages about this technique can be summarized like these:

 # The success of this approach makes clear that the team has understood the function and it is capable to describe it in two words.
 # With this technique, it is way easier to not be confused. This is a common phenomenon as the functions are plenty and it is not easy to seperate the different meanings of each. 

Creative Phase

production of ideas which correspond the needs

Here, the team generates the ideas which are corresponding better to the functions. It is a brainstorming productive and why not innovative idea.

Evaluation Phase

ranking the ideas

In this phase, the team considers about the advantages and disadvantages of each idea of the previous step. It is important the team members to be objective as a non-critical view may lead to wrong outcome in the end. The team performs a weighted matrix analysis to group and rank the alternatives, and the best alternatives are selected for consideration in the next phase.

Development Phase

review and selection of the most suitable ideas

An in-depth analysis follows the Evaluation Phase. The team now creates a profile for every alternative which has been selected previously in order to inform the client about the idea. The profile may consists of sketches, diagrams, 3D models, cost estimation and cost savings of the building.

Presentation Phase

presentation to the clients

The value engineering team meets the stakeholders. The Evaluation and Development Phases are now represented to the customers through reports, flow charts in a high level of detail in order to convince them about the outcome and the positive impact of their generated ideas.

Implementation Phase

realization of the selected by the client’s ideas

This step exists from the moment in which the stakeholders have been convinced and agreed with the previous presentations. Any changes should be incorporated into the implementation plan before the implementation begins.

Limitations

As everywhere, in this technique is easy to detect the limitations, which are man-made . Some of these are the following:

• Difficulties in the communication inside the multidisciplinary team
• Lack of motivation
• Lack of knowledge
• Persistence from stakeholders for even less cost