Understanding Value Engineering for Your Commercial Construction Project

As you begin undertaking your commercial construction process, there’s a term you should be familiar with: value engineering. This pre-construction process was formalized during WWII, when General Electric CO. worked to explore alternatives when faced with wartime shortages of materials and labor.

Often, people may shy away from the concept of value engineering, holding the misconception that the process centers around cutting costs at every corner – at the expense of your commercial construction project as a whole. However, this simply isn’t true. Skillful value engineering, done correctly, can help you create the most thoughtful, optimized, finished building project possible. Read on to learn how this process works – and how the commercial builders at Bomar Construction can help.

What Does “Value Engineering” Mean?

Simply put, value engineering refers to the process of targeting low cost and high value for your commercial construction project. To achieve this final goal, your project team will want to research to identify alternative materials or methods to reduce cost or save time. However, this also means assuring that any alternatives utilized meet all the essential requirements of the project – and provide the most value possible. This covers many different areas of consideration. For example, what will the ongoing upkeep and maintenance look like for the final product? Could the alternative option yield improved or reduced performance? How will wear and tear affect the alternative as opposed to the initial design? In a systematic manner, your project team should identify the lowest possible cost for the project that creates the most value for the final product – both now and into the future.

Why Is It Important?

The process of value engineering plays a critical role in determining the budget for your commercial construction project – or, in reverse, how an ideal project might be able to fit into preconceived budgetary constraints. Therefore, in the service of finding an accurate initial budget for a building project, the project team should spend time studying value engineering processes to find your best-quality choices at the best-possible costs. Because you’ve already considered the future for your project, you will not deal with as many costly surprises in years down the line.

What Does It Mean for Your Project?

Integrating value engineering into your project should be a natural process. Think critically about the fixtures, materials, and design elements being included into your construction project – and consider opportunities to save on costs without reducing quality unnecessarily. For example, this might mean considering the benefits of a different type of flooring throughout the space. A small difference in cost per square foot could yield big savings throughout a large space. However, think critically about the quality of lower-cost flooring – and how long it may be before that flooring needs replacement. In some areas, value engineering might indicate that it’s better to pay more upfront for longer-lasting quality.

Planning to value engineer your project in the beginning stages of construction management is crucial to avoiding high costs and delays in your schedule. However, you also need keen eyes and a skilled team of commercial builders to think critically throughout the construction process. This way, you can steer the project and solidify ways to add value – without incurring costs over budget or impacting your schedule. For all your needs planning and undertaking quality commercial construction, turn to Bomar Construction, Inc. – the Ormond Beach-based, State Certified General Contractor you can trust!