Traditional Practice and Value Management
Under traditional practice, the design professionals, architects and engineers,
develop plans and specifications to meet the design criteria of the owner/operator.
However, each design discipline being compartmentalized often by sub-agreement,
tends to generate its own requirements and then review and modify these requirements
more or less in isolation. Since each discipline tends to prescribe maximum performance
and safety factors, in its own self-interest of professional liability, unilateral
decisions are taken which may have the effect of modifying the criteria and standards
of the owner.
Under these circumstances, decisions are reached which are not the most economical
or acceptable for the end use of the facility. Effective decisions involving total
overall costs require a team approach by people knowledgeable in all costs. The
value management stages described earlier provide the means for this team approach.
To some, value management appears as an interruption to the design process,
particularly as not all professional disciplines advance at the same pace. In
fact, in building work, because of their logical dependencies, architectural design
leads the parade followed by structural, mechanical and electrical, in that order.
Thus, electrical design may be only 15% advanced when architectural design is
already 60% complete.
In fact, the early application of value management accelerates design and saves
time by clarifying design scope, avoiding unnecessary design work, preventing
false starts and reducing time loss when budgets are exceeded. In practice, the
tighter the schedule for design the more beneficial the application of a value
management design review workshop.
The cost of these reviews may range from 0.1 to 0.5% of project costs, yet
result in savings of 10% or more. A pay-off of up to 100 times is not uncommon,
especially if it is determined that certain elements could be eliminated altogether!
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Life Cycle Cost of Building Ownership
