Skills enhancement on Value Engineering Planning in the Public sector

Course Overview

Value, in its broadest sense, is the benefit to the client, offered by a project. Value Engineering (VE) is a creative, organized approach to offer project stakeholders an opportunity to optimize project value, reduce life-cycle costs, address financial issues, and eliminate unnecessary costs. The VE methodology emphasizes the return-on-investment aspect of decision-making in terms of lifecycle costs during project planning, procurement, and execution. It can be used to identify alternative ideas and solutions at any project phase to produce the client’s best value requirements. VE, however, is not about selecting the cheapest option; rather, it is about realizing the best value for money.

This course is designed to provide the participants with expert guidance for securing real benefits and cost savings by implementing VE in their projects with a greater emphasis on the development of project scope, charter, cost estimates, plans, and budget. Within the project management context, the course significantly enhances creative thinking, problem-solving, objective assessment, and informed decision-making skills. This course is designed to provide the participants with expert guidance for securing real benefits and cost savings by implementing VE in their projects with a greater emphasis is on the development of project scope, charter, cost estimates, plans, and budget. Within the project management context, the course significantly enhances creative thinking, problem-solving, objective assessment, and informed decision-making skills.

The course adopts a systematic step-by-step methodology to support the initiation, planning, and application of VE techniques. It covers key elements in the VE application including forming and managing an integrated multi-disciplinary project team to generate solutions and recommend alternatives; capturing stakeholders' requirements and expectations, developing conceptual cost estimates and models, undertaking life-cycle costing analysis, and producing a high-level project plan to guide project execution and control.

Course Objectives:

At the end of this course, the participants will be able to:
Understand the fundamental concepts of Value Engineering and Analysis
Understand how value engineering supports effective project management by providing a continuous thread of good practice throughout the project development process
Appreciate the level and nature of the information needed to develop a project scope
Gather and organize information and cost relevant to key elements of the project
Learn how to capture and incorporate stakeholders’ input in the development of the project charter and plan.
Critically assess and evaluate the relationships among key attributes such as cost, value, and function
Report effectively to top management and project stakeholders in the context of proposing alternatives that improve the overall project value
Demonstrate proficiency in applying life-cycle costing principles
Present a convincing case in support of certain project alternatives.
Compare the costs of alternatives to ensure the most economical project at the desired level of quality
Keep accurate control of the progressive budgeting process based on the various stages of design
Manage the interface between many value-adding project phases and management expectations
Apply systematic and innovative methodology with a multi-disciplinary approach to achieve better value and cost optimization for projects.
Spread cost-consciousness among project team members
Focus on function and thereby develops creative thinking towards project cost reduction

Course Content:

Unit 1: Framework for Applying Value Engineering in Projects:

What is Value Engineering? Why is it important?
Defining Value Engineering Concepts and principles
Purpose of Value Engineering and Value Analysis
Strengths and Weaknesses of Value Engineering
How and When is Value Engineering Applied?
Project definition and initiation
Project scope and charter development
Life-cycle costing techniques
Project stakeholders analysis and management
Identifying relationships between Value, Cost and Worth
Initiating Value Engineering Process
Overview of Different Value Engineering Phases
The Information Phase – steps and procedures
Developing Value Engineering Job Plan

Unit 2: The Function Analysis Phase - Expressing Project Functional Needs and Constraints:

The need for Function Analysis in projects
Defining project constraints – relationships and tradeoffs
Conceptual project cost estimating techniques
Function-Cost-Worth Analysis
Developing FAST Diagrams to identify critical project components
The Technical FAST Model to perform project value analysis
Case Study
Cross-Functional Project Team Approach

Unit 3: The Creative Phase - Inspiring Creativity in Your Project Team:

Creativity and Creative thinking within the project environment
Individual vs. Group thinking to improve the quality of project decisions
Creativity techniques as applied to optimize project value
Blocks to creativity within the project team
Brainstorm project solutions
Reaching consensus and leveraging the power of project team collaboration
Project risk perception and identification
Project prioritization process using the Delphi technique
The use of Force-field analysis in project problem solving
Output of the Creative Phase

Unit 4: The Evaluation Phase - Making Informed Project Decisions:

Project ideas screening
Project evaluation methods
Quantitative evaluation using objective data
Subjective evaluation – project-related criteria weighting
Revisiting project life-cycle costing analysis
Incorporating inflation in project economic analysis
Performing project risk and scenario analyses
Risk Life-cycle simulation modeling - best and worst project cost scenarios
Pitfalls associated with the use of existing economic models
Incremental benefit-cost analysis for project evaluation
Effective Decision-making in a project environment
Output of the Evaluation Phase

Unit 5: The Planning and Reporting Phases - Getting Results Through Effective Communication:

Develop and assess VE proposals to optimize project value
Develop action plans and assign project roles and responsibilities
Reporting VE findings to Senior Management and project stakeholders
Mastering oral presentation techniques & interpersonal skills
Strategies for project plan execution
Incorporating VE into the early project phases
Integrating VE with Continuous Improvement Techniques

Targeted Groups:

Project or Program Sponsors
Project Managers
Cost Estimators
Cost Controllers
Engineers
Designers and Project Staff
Anyone Involved in Project Initiation, Engineering Design, and Critical Assessment of Projects