Applying Value Engineering Techniques In Road Projects In Nepal

Value engineering is a systematic and organized procedural decision-making process carried out in a team setting by generating alternatives to secure essential functions as opposed to cost. It is based on behavioral decision theories and is used by many governments and organizations to reduce life cycle costs. This process offers project stakeholders an opportunity to maximize the most important elements of a project by evaluating the value, lessoning life cycle costs, addressing financial issues and reducing waste and unnecessary costs.With plans to add more than 4000 Kilometers of road length in the next 20 years and at the same time maintain and upgrade the present road network of more than 15000 kilometers in a good condition, road sector in Nepal is faced with resource constraints to meet its set objectives. One-way of fulfilling this deficit in funds would be to ask for more loans or burden the taxpayers with additional taxes. An effective and attractive alternative however could be actually reducing the cost of road projects itself using suitable cost reducing techniques such as Value Engineering.The aim of this thesis is to find out why it is beneficial to introduce Value Engineering Techniques in Road Projects in Nepal and how it should be done. For this the current environment in the Nepalese road sector was analyzed and a possible introduction approaches examined.To meet the objectives of the study Qualitative and Quantitative analysis of the responses received through the questionnaires distributed to the experts in the road sector were carried out and detailed study Value Engineering was done. Review of available literature in the relevant fields and extensive search in the Internet were an important part of the thesisThe analysis revealed that Road projects in Nepal suffered from lack of proper planning, design and implementation. It was found that many of the existing deficiencies such as cost and time over run in the road projects can be minimized if not eliminated using Value Engineering techniques.Although the Public Works Directives has listed Value Engineering as one of the tools to be used for design optimization during engineering design no concrete plans to actually apply this tool have been initiated.