The Role of Value Engineering Knowledge Management on the Value Engineering Development: Evidence From the Public Construction Sector of Bahrain

Introduction

Recently, the phenomenon of distressed real estate projects, become the most important concern to the developing world’s governments and the pioneers of the sustainable development movements became the source of Anxiety and tension that forced the governments to rethink about their spending strategies. The major cause for this situation and the biggest challenge facing the decision makers and engineers is the absence of convincing and clear mechanism to estimate the costs and improve the quality of the projects to prevent them from faltering. Value Engineering has been around for more than half a century (John Kelly, Steven Male, Drunimond Graham, 2004), contributed to a more precise definition of the projects’ objectives and requirements, thus speeding up the accomplishment of projects, reducing their cost and raising their quality altogether, improving the coordination between the relevant projects concerned parties such as the owner, consultants, specialists and contractors, and developing better buildings standards and specifications.

The VE has grew over time from a purchasing- based analysis system into a value management tool that can be used on products, projects, and services and almost in any sector in which value improvement is essential. The VE emerged from the Manufacturing industry during World War II, when the increased materials' consumption for war purposes, causes materials shortage or vanishing. The need inspired manufacturers to determine alternative materials and designs to meet the demand for their products. After years of designing around shortages, the General Electric (GE) Company realized that many of the substitute materials were produced equal or better performance while providing these benefits at a lower cost. The electrical engineer, Lawrence D. Miles, was assigned to do the value study for the department of purchasing in Schenectady, New York (John Kelly, Steven Male, Drunimond Graham, 2004). In 1947, Miles began developing a “Function-oriented” concept he had worked on earlier into an orderly system. Basically, he focused on the product’s functions through generating alternatives to realize the same functions with the required quality. This was the core concept of Value Engineering. Miles suggested calling the employees who do the value improvement work “engineers” not analysts and later, this concept was assigned with the name of “Value Engineering” (Younker, 2003). And Because of its generic nature VE has been developed and adopted in various disciplines. Miles’s success at Schenectady and other GE’s departments leads to train thousands of employees to practice the Value Engineering. During the first four decades, The VE developed within the manufacturing sector with only slight leakage into other areas. From the mid-1980s The VE has been adopted as a value for money measure in the construction projects in many countries (John Kelly, Steven Male, Drunimond Graham, 2004).