Value Engineering

(updated  31st August 2007)

 

Value Engineering (VE)

What Is Value Engineering?

An organized effort directed at analyzing the functions of systems, equipment, facilities, services, and supplies for the purpose of achieving the essential functions at the lowest life-cycle cost consistent with required performance, reliability, quality, and safety. These organized efforts can be performed by both in-house agency personnel and by contractor personnel.

Value Engineering (VE), also known as Value Analysis, is a systematic and function-based approach to improving the value of products, projects, or processes.

VE involves a team of people following a structured process. The process helps team members communicate across boundaries, understand different perspectives, innovate, and analyze.

What is value?

Value is a personal perspective of your willingness to pay for the performance delivered by a product, process or project.

Good value is achieved when the required performance can be accurately defined and delivered at the lowest life cycle cost.

  • Life-cycle cost. The total cost of a system, building, or other product, computed over its useful life. It includes all relevant costs involved in acquiring, owning, operating, maintaining, and disposing of the system or product over a specified period of time, including environmental and energy costs.
  • Cost savings. A reduction in actual expenditures below the projected level of costs to achieve a specific objective.
  • Cost avoidance. An action taken in the immediate time frame that will decrease costs in the future. For example, an engineering improvement that increases the mean time between failures and thereby decreases operation and maintenance costs is a cost avoidance action.

What does Value Engineering do?

Value Engineering improves value. On highway projects, improvements to value might include reducing the life cycle cost of an interchange, enhancing safety in a design, or reducing impacts to the public by shortening the duration of a construction project.

Value Engineering uses a combination of creative and analytical techniques to identify alternative ways to achieve objectives.

The use of Function Analysis differentiates Value Engineering from other problem solving approaches.

VE focuses on delivering the product or service at the best price by incorporating those value characteristics deemed most important by the customer.

How does Function Analysis work?

In Function Analysis, an active verb and a measurable noun describe a function. As an example, the function of this website is to "inform reader".


How does VE work?

VE follows a structured thought process to evaluate options. Every VE session goes through a number of steps:
 

  1. Gather information
  2. What is being done now?
  3. Measure Performance
  4. How will the alternatives be measured?
  5. Analyse Functions
  6. What must be done?
  7. What does it Cost?
  8. Generate Ideas (Brainstorming)
  9. What else will do the job?
  10. Evaluate and Rank Ideas
  11. Which Ideas are the best?
  12. Develop and Expand Ideas
  13. What are the impacts?
  14. What is the cost?
  15. What is the performance?
  16. Present Ideas
  17. Sell Alternatives


What are the benefits of VE?

Value Engineering is a tool that will improve your ability to manage projects, solve problems, innovate, and communicate.

A VE program in your organization will provide your staff with a definitive tool to improve value in any product, project or process.

Cost savings, risk reduction, schedule improvements, improved designs and better collaboration have been the outcomes of some of VE benefits.

A typical VE study involves a multi-disciplinary team at a workshop lasting 3 to 5 days. The payback from the investment in VE normally exceeds 10:1.
 

Building a Myriad model to assess the "wear and tear" and under utilised space in a complex environment.

 

Step 1. From a CAD file remove all the information (text etc.) that does NOT relate to the areas that the pedestrians will occupy. This is easily achieved by using the appropriate layers in autocad. Then you "export" as a bitmap.

 

Step 2. Save as a screen image and import to Myriad - Myriad converts these files to a grey/black scale for processing. Once the bitmap is saved from from autocad you click on "import bitmap" and use the free space buttons to define the pedestrian areas.

 

Step 3. Run a series of diffusion maps for each Origin-Destination pair. At this stage (a few minutes of user time) the system displays the areas of highest usage (wear and tear). the red area (left) shows the wear and tear for JUST the escalator bank at the bottom left. Given the Origins from all the other ingress areas. The process utilises a mathematical theorem which produces the overall probability of conflict maps.

 

Step 4. Once the Diffusion Maps are stored for each Origin-Destination pair (called and O-D matrix) the superposition of ALL the O-D pairs produces a Level of Service map. Red areas have the highest utilisation and therefore at a given ingress/egress rate the highest Level of Service.

 

Step 5. The areas of LOWEST space utilisation indicate those areas that could be reclaimed - it is this map (wasted space) that allows the user to determine the value engineering (how to develop cost effective spaces) can be justified.

 

  
How can I add value to my venue? 
 

 

Comparison of two alternate layouts in a supermarket.

Using the probability of conflict (PoC) mapping process we can determine which layout has fewer "interactions". Interactions are where two or more shoppers are trying to be in the same place at the same time. To increase throughput you can optimise the PoC. Of course the PoC serves to increase SOCIAL interactions so the PoC mapping serves us a spatial metric. Reducing the PoC between people and cars in car parks helps reduce the risk of injury.

Above - Spatial Analysis of a Supermarket - click here for further information.