The Research And Application Of Value Engineering In Design Phase Of XM Tunnel Project

With the rapid economic development and fast urbanization significantly ofChina, a lot of municipal projects are being constructed. The constructions of suchprojects are a complex process, which involves in large amount of investment,manpower, construction period, and other complex factors. Therefore, we needscientific and effective project plan to ensure the quality of the project tasks becauseof limited cost. The construction of the entire project life cycle can be divided intofive stages, which is the project proposal and study stage, plan and design stage,construction and implementation stage, operation and maintenance stage. From theview of engineering practice and engineering cost, the comparative analysis indicatesthat no matter the large civil engineering projects or municipal road and bridgeconstruction project, the design phase impacts more than75%cost of the entireproject once the investment decision being make. Obviously, when the investmentdecision is determined, the design phase will be the key point to control project cost.Value Engineering(VE), as an economic and technology combined modernmanagement technique for saving project cost and improve function, plays animportant role on achieving best combination of the project function and cost. ValueEngineering encourages functional analysis and collaboration in several related areas,and seeks certain methods to achieve the best combination of project function and cost.The aim is to improve project value, resulting in higher economic and social benefits.The purpose of the Value Engineering application is to improve the project value, andthe key of VE application is the systematic analysis of the project between functionand cost to propose innovative solutions for creative thinking. During the applicationof VE, we need to identify the key areas where improvements and enhancements, thenuse innovative thinking to adjust and optimize the design of programs, reduce costs,and ultimately get to the final purpose of increasing the project value.Project design phase is an important stage of the project investment. This articledescribes the project cost control theory of engineering design phase, and the conceptof Value Engineering, also with a brief introduction of the VE application for designphase of the project. Combined with specific examples, the VE is applied in a tunnelconstruction project in Xiamen, to perform scientific evaluation. Then we used value engineering principles combined with ELECTRE III method to evaluate alternativedesign plans for further selection. This article also discussed how to use valueengineering in the design phase of the project to achieve the purpose of cost control.We hope this case of using value engineering could provide useful reference andexperience in improving practice for similar municipal road construction projects aswell as other constructions.