In this week’s readings, you encountered three accounts of the VE process. While they agreed in most respects, there is some variation. For example, Potts (2013) notes that some VE process in the UK are different than in the United States in terms of who participates in the VE process and why. According to Liu and Shen (2003) communication, cooperation, and feedback with the original design team in a VE study can vary and impact the adoption of the recommendations.
Imagine you are again working with Yerbin, Wren, & Ewell (YWE), the fictional construction company introduced in the first week’s discussion. You are working on the project team to design and build an office building that will serve as a regional headquarters for an international client. While settling the terms of the contract, the client and YWE agree to value engineer the project as a whole at key gateways during the design phase. However both parties are at an impasse as to how this VE will occur. The client prefers to bring in a third-party VE team to provide them and your project team with recommendations. The client feels that an impartial team would be better prepared to make recommendations as they have no vested interest in the outcomes of the project. Your team would only be available to respond to any queries from the VE team, but would not be part of the workshop that produces the final report with recommended changes.
YWE would prefer to follow its standard VE process. The internal Value Manager would lead your project team in a VE workshop that includes other members of YWE who are not on the project. YWE feels the client’s method to be too confrontational and that your team would not have a vested interest in implementing any of the recommendations as you were not party to their creation. Furthermore, an outside team would waste valuable time becoming familiar with the project and would disrupt the internal review mechanisms YWE has already implemented. YWE has asked you, as a member of the project team, what you feel would be the best course of action.
For this week’s Discussion, what do you feel would be the best course of action, the client’s method, YWE’s method, or would you suggest a third way? Whichever you choose, provide a rationale that explains your choice. Be sure to use references from Learning Resources to support your work.
