工商管理外文文献及翻译

The Contractor's Role in Building Cost Reduction After

Design

Author：Waddle,Todd W.

Nationality：UK

Derivation：Cost Engineering; Feb2008, Vol. 50 Issue 2, p14-21

It has become evident from recent news articles that inflationary pressures and increased construction activity are causing many building projects to come in well over owner's budgets. This trend has increased dramatically over the past few years, as much of the construction industry has been impacted by an unprecedented increase in the cost of construction. The historical rate of increase in construction cost has been under five percent per year, as reported by the Engineering News Record. Over the last few years, the industry has seen a significant increase from historical escalation rates, up to 10-15 percent per year in many regions of the US. These increases have been caused by a variety of factors, including the following.

• Shortage of steel resulting from rapid growth in China.

• Demand for materials in the US resulting from increased hur ricane damage. • Rising oil prices leading to higher manufacturing and transportation cost. • Rising labor cost because of increased construction activity .

To be successful in having over budget projects awarded, the building contractor has had to take a proactive role in working with owners and design teams to reduce project cost to amounts that owners are able to award. This cost reduction is normally accomplished through the following methods.

• value engineering;

• scope reduction;

Value Engineering

Value engineering (VE) has been defined as a systematic method to improve the value of goods and services by using an examination of function. Value, as defined, is the ratio of function to cost. Value can therefore be increased by either improving the function or reducing the cost.

It is a primary tenet of value engineering that quality not be reduced as a consequence of pursuing value improvements . VE is a process originating at General Electric Company (GE) during World War II. Because of shortages of skilled labor, raw materials, and component parts, engineers at GE

looked for acceptable alternates and often found substitutions that resulted in reduced costs and/or product improvement.

GE developed a systematic process that they called value analysis. Over the years the name gradually changed to VE. The basic steps of VE include the following：

• Information gathering: project requirements defined, function analysis.

• Alternates: various ways of meeting the requirements and functions.

• Evaluation: asses sment of alternates on how well they meet requirements and costs savings.

• Presentation: selection of best alternatives to be presented to client for decisions.

True VE evaluates life cycle costs such as initial cost, maintenance cost, operational cost, life span, time value of money, replacement cost, and frequency of replacement. VE can be undertaken at any stage of the building design process; however, it is most effective in the early stages, since it is less costly to make changes to preliminary documents .

Scope Reduction

Scope reduction involves identifying areas of the project scope of work that can be reduced in quality, quantity, or both in a manner that is acceptable to the owner.

Scope reduction items of work often consist of material or equipment substitutions that lower the cost of the project, but may not be an equal substitute. An example of quantity scope reduction would be to reduce the guttering system on a pitched roof from the entire roof perimeter to entrances only. A quality scope reduction example would be to provide vinyl composition floor tiles (VCT) in lieu of ceramic floor tiles.

After a project has been determined to be out of budget because of high bids, the project is normally either cancelled, redesigned and re-bid, or negotiations are held with the low bidder to reach an acceptable contract amount. For the building contractor that is selected for negotiations, this is an