Value management

The term ‘value management’ is often the source of much confusion, with many misunderstanding the fundamental differences that exist between value management (VM) and value engineering (VE). Unsurprisingly, this has led to it being commonplace within construction management and quantity surveying circles for the two phrases to be used erroneously as interchangeable concepts.

At its core, value management is a service that allows a project team to simultaneously improve the value for money individual projects can realise by helping empower employers to wholly identify, understand and rigidly define their individual strategic demands.

In the 2017 guidance note Value management and value engineering, RICS introduced the concept of ‘value’ as ‘the ratio between the benefit derived from a course of action and the cost or effort required to achieve it’. In this, its truest sense, the relevance and application of ‘value’ to the ‘typical’ construction project scenario is obvious given the inherent significance of cost (and other finite resources) to any scheme.

At the heart of competent value management is the process to remove any ambiguity or subjectiveness around the term ‘benefit derived’, thus ensuring these parameters are capable of description and (perhaps more importantly) measurement (Kelly et al. 2014).

This section is maintained by Peter Nicholls MRICS of Appleyard & Trew.

RICS standards: Value management and value engineering

RICS journal article: Getting value management right