The Technique of Value Engineering (VE) in Architecture
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.
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 tool can be applied at any step in a project, from the pre-workshop preparation to the post-workshop implementation. [1]
According to the Value Methodology Standard, value engineering can be described by the following 6-phases:
- Information Phase
- Function Analysis
- Creative Phase
- Evaluation Phase
- Development Phase
- Presentation
- Implementation
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