Value Engineering & Value Management: NTK Lokuliyana
Value Engineering & Value Management: NTK Lokuliyana
Value Engineering & Value Management: NTK Lokuliyana
by
NTK Lokuliyana
Value Engineering (VE) is a management technique that seeks the best functional balance between Cost, Reliability and Performance of a product , project , process or service.
VE is generally conducted by an experience multidisciplinary team with varied specializations. The whole perspective of the VE team is to analyse the project from a functional/cost standpoint. Therein VE team would work out alternative design options that may improve the performance, build-ability and life-cycle
Value Engineering team is generally independent of the design team, but its members must have experience in the particular field of the project in
Value Engineering began during the World War II at General Electric.Co (GE) Value Engineering came into effect to maximize the limited labour, raw material and component parts otherwise being utilize for the war. Due to the scarcity of resource Lawrence Miles, Jerry Leftow and Harry Erlicher at GE, look for substitutes. They realize that substitution they came up with often reduced costs, improved product or both. What started as an accident of necessity was turned into a systematic process which they called Value Analysis.
Initially Miles and Co at GE observed that many of the substitute were providing equal or better performance at a lower costs; thus the first definition of Value Engineering became focused on the Cost ; i.e. costs validation exercises.
However, Miles initial definition, i.e. value engineering to be a cost validation exercise completely ignored the quality and the end-use of the product/project. Value Engineering is not a cost cutting exercise by sacrificing the quality of the product of services.
The original definition therefore transformed to as Value Engineering is; A organized approach for the identification and elimination of unnecessary costs. Unnecessary costs implies to cost which provides neither use , nor life, nor quality, nor appearance and nor customer features.
Engineering and Value Management often means different things to different people.
The client could be concern of the escalation of the estimated cost for the project. The client could be concern due to the tenders received were in excess of the budget. The client may be loosing confidence in the design team and/or project. The client may require an independent audit of the project before it is submitted for approval. The client may seek to minimize the capital and/or operational costs and maximize profits The client may genuinely wish to pursue an innovative/better solution for his/her project.
Presentation Phase
Information Phase Further familiarization of the project by the team; all team members participate in a function analysis of the project as a whole, and then of its component part, to determine the true needs of the project. Areas of high costs or low worth are also to be identified during this phase. Information phase of the Value Engineering Study is a never ending process as it keeps on adding as the study progress.
Speculation Phase During this phase the VE team will list creative ideas generated from its review of the project with the aim of obtaining a large number of ideas through brainstorming.
Judgment Phase During this phase VE team will analyze the creative ideas generated during the previous stage. Ideas found to be impractical and to be irrelevant, or not worthy of additional study shall be regarded. Ideas with the potential of cost saving or improvements to the project shall be identified for further development.
Development Phase During this phase VE team shall prepare alternative designs with capital and/or life cycle cost comparison of original design and proposed alternatives. All recommendations are supplemented with written descriptions, sketches, basic concepts , technical information and cost summaries.
Presentation Phase During this phase VE team shall present an oral summary of its finding to the owner and the designer, explaining the basic ideas of alternatives, its cost-saving implications and their attendant rationales.
Phase 3 The Post Workshop Phase In the Post Workshop Phase the VE team will prepare a report for the owner incorporating their findings discuss in previous phases. The owner and the designer shall then consider the VE recommendation , and jointly decide which recommendations have merit for implementation in the revised design.
The five (5) steps of the job plan are shown in the diagram above. The significance of the arrows is that whilst a cascade system is used, with each phase flowing on from and using the output of the preceding phase, there is a frequent reversion to the previous phase.
Improve quality
A recent study carried out in United States shown that typical VE study may realize saving of over 5% of the capital costs of the project and achieve a return of over ten dollars (US $ 10.00) per dollar (US$ 1.00) expended.
VE study costs are approximately 0.4 % of the total construction costs, which is relatively low compared to the potential benefit.
Value Engineering can take place at any stage of the Project. However, it is acknowledged that there is a greater Return of Investment (ROI) if VE is used at a very early stage of a project, as illustrated in the following figure. (See next slide). Ideally VE should be carried out even before allocating funds for the project.
Value Engineering as per the Provision of FIDIC Why Sub Cl. 13.2 in the Contract
For the Contractor profits are derived from the contract costs; therefore, reducing the costs will reduce the profits. Therefore, after the Contract was awarded there is little reason for the Contractor to reduce the acquisition or life cycle costs. Sub-Cl. 13.2 dramatically neutralize this advantage.
Following task undertaken by Quantity Surveying practitioners are deemed to be form part of Value Engineering;
Forecasting expenditure flow Cost planning and cost controlling
Investment appraisal
Value Engineering
Questions ?