Gulf Construction Online - Bahrain puts spotlight on value management

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The team ... Prof Male and Alawi.

Bahrain puts spotlight on value management

01 March 2005

The concept of value management (VM), which has changed considerably over a 60-year period, will be the focus of talks at a training programme that will be organised in Bahrain next month.

Conducted jointly by Professor Steven Male, School of Civil Engineering, University of Leeds, UK and Mohammed Al Alawi, chief of the Engineering Department, JWD, Bahrain, the comprehensive training programme will run at the Crowne Plaza, between April 23 and May 4.
The programme, which is the first of its kind in the kingdom, is accredited under the European Governing Board’s Certification System as operated by the UK’s Institute for Value Management and will seek to introduce the value management methodology into Bahrain to improve the formulation, delivery and value-for-money of projects.
“Value management is the structured process in which the functional benefits of a project are made explicit and appraised against a value system determined by the client, customer, or, other stakeholders,” says Professor Male.
“The concept, which is nearly 60 years old, was dominated by North American thinking for the initial four decades. However, during the past 10 years developments in principally Europe, Australasia and China (notably Hong Kong), have seen divergent thinking emerge, which has now impacted the progress of the value methodology in North America,” says Professor Male.
He continues: “Interestingly, over the period value, management has continuously improved unlike other management fads and has developed into a defined service and given recognition within predominantly the manufacturing and construction sectors of industry. In the UK, for example, the concept has been used by private sector clients and there is also an emergent but strong uptake of value management in the service sector led by the legislated demands for best value in public services.
“The past 10 years have also largely seen the resolution of the debate over terminology aided by the publication of VM standards in many countries. It is generally accepted internationally that value management, or the value methodology in the US, describes the entire service. Other terms, principally value engineering, describe specific parts of the service,” he adds.
Mohammed Al Alawi worked with an international construction company in Bahrain for seven years on a variety of different sizes of projects before joining the public sector in 1997.
Male is a leading proponent of value management in the UK and has been researching value management since the mid 1980s. During the past decade, he has developed and applied value management on a diverse range of projects, ranging in size from £1 million up to £1 billion.
In 1996 the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council funded a team led by Male and Professor John Kelly to undertake an international benchmarking study of value management, which resulted in a best practice framework document published in 1998. To date over 2,500 copies of the benchmarked manual, accompanying research report and interactive CD-ROM have been sold. In 2004 Male co-authored a further book on value management entitled “Value Management in Construction”, with John Kelly and Drummond Graham, a UK value manager, cost consultant and project management practitioner.
During the past 10 years Male and Kelly have interacted with several hundred construction clients, consultants, contractors, and value management practitioners from many countries of the world. They have taught undergraduate and postgraduate modules, run institutionally accredited value management courses, and, supervised research students at PhD level. In each activity they have.