Value Engineering Decision Making Model Using SMART

Value engineering (VE) has a great potential to enhance project delivery. It has become a standard practice for many government agencies, private engineering firms and contractors since its first adoption. Decision makers judge the alternatives performance under selected criteria and simultaneously weighing the relative importance of the criteria in order to reach a global judgment. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) has been widely used over the last several decades to reduce assessment subjectivity. One of MCDA methods is Simple Multi-Attribute Rating Technique (SMART). This paper presents a methodology that improves VE utilization through applying SMART to determine the optimum alternatives. A spreadsheet application was developed to automate the process of criteria and alternatives weighing and assessment. The proposed methodology has been applied to a case study project to show its capabilities and usage. The case study is a laboratory building in Doha, Qatar. It is a part of new Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) Support Campus. The structural slab system of the building was selected to be under VE study. The VE team selected four alternatives for the structural slab with nine performance criteria for evaluation. An in-depth structural analysis was conducted for all building structural elements such as columns and foundations to support the analysis process. The proposed methodology is expected to facilitate and support project managers in taking timely informed decisions.