Abstract:
The world now becomes as one village due to the continuous progress in the field of technology. Sudan being one of the third world countries, is striving to find a place among the developed countries in spite of the complicated world conditions economically and politically.
If this is the case, Sudan should utilize to the utmost extent the local resources and to adapt with the prevailing conditions in the world by using new technology.
To conserve the numerous resources and potentialities available in Sudan, we have to know the new techniques conducted in the developing countries to promote the overall performance in different fields of production specially construction industry. In fact, construction industry is the basic pillar for other industries and hence, great attention should be given to the problems of quality and cost to compete in this dynamic world.
The objective of this research is to study value engineering (VE) and to investigate its effectiveness in improving the design process which is considered as the most important factor in the construction process. It is worth mentioning that the impact of design on the total cost of the project is 50% as reported on the findings of the literature review.
Value engineering (VE) can be defined as a problem solving methodology which was applied in various parts of the world to the construction practices and it proved its effectiveness in optimizing costs and keeping acceptable levels of quality. Value Analysis Methodology was developed in 1947 by a young engineer, Lawrence Miles, at the General Electric Company in U.S.A. Due to the shortage in materials which had happened as a result of the Second World War, he was assigned to design parts from the available raw materials. Instead of focusing on the actual part he was responsible for designing, he focused attention on the function that it had to perform. He found that the end result was invariably simpler, more economic and performed better.
The research included structured interviews conducted among 15 design firms, construction engineers and clients to investigate the design process and to find its weakness and deficiencies. The questions were set to investigate to what extent VE components were applied on those projects under study and their impact on design. The collected data was then analyzed statistically using ANOVA and Chi-square methods.
The current techniques of VE were applied in two projects as elaboration to clarify how these techniques are carried out.
Discussion of the results, recommendations and suggestions for further studies were presented in the last chapter of this research.
