Abstract

Value engineering is a systematic approach used in various industries and construction industry as well to remove the unnecessary costs without any sacrifice in function, safety or target quality.

This research studies the awareness and implementation of value engineering to the construction of university buildings in Egypt for the huge amow1ts of money spent in these projects. This was done by investigating twenty three fim1s which represents all the various parties involved in the construction of university buildings.

The questionnaire is designed and questions are put to serve the objectives of the research. The data collected in the research questionnaire showed that the level of awareness varies from one party to another with the highest awareness level among project management firms (100%), followed by the contracting firms (85%), consultancy firms (83%), and finally owners (66%). Although the level of awareness is not low but these parties are not implementing value engineering in the optimum way following the steps of the value engineering job plan. Despite the poor implementation of value engineering still these firms achieved considerable savings which emphasizes the benefits of implementing value engineering to this type of projects.

The case studies showed an average saving of9.49% of the total cost of the project with an average 66.9% of it coming from architectural items, 12.8% from structural items, 19 .2% from electromechanical items, and 1.1 % from landscape items. These results showed that a better implementation of value engineering would result in greater savings. Finally, the data collected in the cases which were described in the questionnaire was used to construct a computer model that gives the user guidelines to implement value engineering to university building projects in an organized and systematic way. The computer model is supported by a bank of ideas which supplies the user with alternatives that had been successfully used before in value engineering studies. The computer model is verified using two case studies in which the model performed successfully throughout all the steps and phases of value engineering until it produces the final report of the study.

Department

Construction Engineering Department

Degree Name

MS in Construction Engineering

Date of Award

6-10-2006

Online Submission Date

6-6-2006

First Advisor

Ahmed Samer Ezeldin

Committee Member 1

Abdel Hady Hosny

Committee Member 2

Osama Hosny

Committee Member 3

Emad Imam

Document Type

Thesis

Extent

140 leaves :

Library of Congress Subject Heading 1

Value analysis (Cost control)

Library of Congress Subject Heading 2

College buildings

Rights

The American University in Cairo grants authors of theses and dissertations a maximum embargo period of two years from the date of submission, upon request. After the embargo elapses, these documents are made available publicly. If you are the author of this thesis or dissertation, and would like to request an exceptional extension of the embargo period, please write to thesisadmin@aucegypt.edu

Call Number

Thesis 2006/95

Location

mgfth

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Included in

Engineering Commons

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