Beyond Risk Mitigation: Integrating Value Management for Successful Construction Projects

Value management is described as a method used in the construction design process to identify or establish the value system of the client and it also serves to ensure that the client values are communicated and understood by the project team (Green, 1991). Value Management (VM) evolved from Value Engineering (VE), which places significant emphasis on optimising the function of an asset in terms of lowest cost while the VM methodology consists of a number of steps which examine the functional requirements of the client through a process of analysis and then synthesises a suitable design that offers the best value and meets the functional requirements of the client (Thiry, 1997; PMI, 2015). This study endeavored to provide a clear distinction between VE and VM because these terms are mostly applied by different scholars interchangeably. It is for this purpose that the researcher further emphasised that only VM was adopted for use in this study. It is also asserted that Value Management is different from value Engineering in that VM is aimed at the optimisation of solutions in the establishment of suitable decision frameworks for the rest of the project which is achieved through the use of a structured decision model that originates in Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (Green, 1994). A project is a once-off activity, with one chance to achieve a satisfactory outcome and this necessitates the establishment of unambiguous objectives. Value Management identifies the option which gives the best value for money in accordance with the set criteria (Hiley and Paliokostas, 2001).