Value engineering approach in the underpass projects in Iran: A case study in Gachsaran underpass project

Abstract

Every year country is suffered from a huge amount of damage which is caused by unfinished construction projects. Most of these losses are resulted from the lack of allocation of funds timely as well as the disproportionate costs to the functions of the project. Considering that, Iran is a developing country and due to this development-oriented approach, every year many schemes and projects are implemented. If a technique is to be applied to minimize the large construction projects cost, it can contribute to finish projects rapidly and exploit them quickly. The change proposal by value engineering method is a management technique of cost reduction which is able to increase the qualitative criteria of the project. In this method, contractors propose their creative ideas for improving the running project by applying value engineering pattern and after confirmation and the exact audit, a percentage of savings is awarded to them to encourage and compensate the loss resulted from costs reduction of the project. This study aims to increase the application of change proposal methodology in the civil projects of country and utilize its benefits. Initially, this study tries to introduce this methodology by investigating the fundamental concepts of this method and pointing to the advantages of this managerial technique compared to other methods as well as examining a successful external and internal study and finally, by conducting a value engineering study on it begin to propose a suggestion to extend the application of this managerial technique in the civil projects of country. According to the results of this study, the capabilities of this managerial new method can be utilized optimally to improve the civil projects of country by paving the ground and disseminating the culture of utilization of change proposal in the projects and reforming relevant laws and rules and also removing administrative problems and facilitating the implementation trend of change proposal.