AASHTO VE-4 pdf free download
AASHTO VE-4 pdf free download.American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.
What Is Value Engineering?
Generations of VE users have found it to be a multidisciplinary, systematic tool that is very useful for identifying, analyzing, and solving problems. By carefully examining each component of an undertaking, VE helps to find new and better ways of doing things. It can be used in building highways, constructing factories, designing office procedures, and even in purchasing the family automobile.
Value engineering combines creative and analytical skills to improve the value of products and services by examining their function. Value is the ratio of function to cost, so value can therefore be increased by either improving the function or reducing the cost. VE is unique from other problem solving techniques because of function analysis.
Value engineering is also known as value analysis, the value methodologies, value planning, etc.
History of Value Engineering
VE was developed during World War II by Lawrence Mes of General Electric. Seeking a way to make the most efficient use of war-limited funds and raw materials, Mes devised a team-oriented technique that determines the objective of a project, service, or process; analyzes functions; and examines each step for ways to increase efficiency and to cut costs and completion time.
After Mes’s development of the VE process, several agencies realized the benefits and began to implement the process on existing parts and further evolving into conceptual designs. In 1954, the U.S. Navy, Bureau of Ships became the first agency to apply this analysis process to major construction projects.
In 1959, the Society of American Value Engineers (later renamed SAVE International) was established in Washington, DC, to unite practitioners and promote the growth of value engineering. The Society changed its name to SAVE International in 1997. The Society officially defined value engineering as “the systematic application of recognized techniques which identify the function of a product or service, establish a value for that function, and provide the necessary function at the least overall cost. In all instances, the required function should be achieved at the lowest possible life-cycle cost consistent with requirements and/or performance, maintainability, safety, and aesthetics.”
During the I 970s, escalating construction and maintenance costs, combined with reduced revenues, led to an increased interest in value engineering by state and federal transportation agencies. VE is now a practice used in most transportation departments in the United States.
FHWA Participation
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has been involved in VE since the early 1 970s and continues today in assisting states in developing their individual VE programs.
Benefits of a Value Engineering Program
As promoted by FHWA and implemented by state and local governments, VE has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to reduce project costs, improve quality and productivity, foster innovation, and eliminate unnecessary and costly design elements. Value engineering applied to a suitable portfolio of projects saves money and improves design. Techniques can be used to improve productivity or the “benefit-to-cost ratio” in nearly every aspect of a state’s transportation program, including preliminary engineering, traffic operations, maintenance, right-of-way, environmental, standard plans and specifications, design criteria, and guidelines.AASHTO VE-4 pdf download.
