Value Engineering Study of Low-Cost Governmental Housing Projects in Egypt

Elziny, Yehia Ahmed; Mohamdeen, Mohamed; Essawy, Ahmed Sherif

doi:10.21608/pserj.2015.36722

Value Engineering Study of Low-Cost Governmental Housing Projects in Egypt

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ M.Sc. Candidate, Department of Civil Engineering, Port Said University, Port Said, Egypt

² X-President and Emeritus Professor of Steel Structures, Suez Canal University, Ismailia, Egypt

³ Emeritus Professor of Concrete Structures, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt

10.21608/pserj.2015.36722

Abstract

Value Engineering (VE) techniques are usually implemented in construction industry to determine the project required function with lowest overall cost and/or increased performance which indicates highest possible value.
In the present study, the concept of Value Engineering was discussed; its job plan and the effective implementation of its procedures through a case study were presented. VE study is applied to the first phase of a national low-cost housing project in Port- Said Governorate, Egypt. The study comprised of three stages: First stage is to investigate on VE merits and possibility of application in such projects via a questionnaire to collect such data from specialist's respondents. Second stage focusing on the analysis of the applied phases of Value Engineering job plan in order to reduce the estimated cost and/or increase project performance. Third is to propose a computer model for recommendation phase in order to calculate the total potential savings and the percentage of savings in an organized systematic way similar to physical VE studies.
As a result of the present study, applying five phases of the VE job plan to the first phase of a national low-cost housing project in Port Said Governorate and replacement of selected items, led to a potential cost saving of nearly 44%.
As a result of the present questionnaire, nearly 85% of questionnaire respondents did not use VE techniques in their construction projects in Egypt. Others stated that these techniques were applied on less than 10% of projects in their organizations. 92% of respondents stated that the lack of awareness of VE among the project parties was the main reason that delayed its wide spread in Egyptian construction industry.
Based on the present study, database software was developed in this research to calculate the total potential savings and the percentage of savings in any project via applying VE techniques.

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