The Ravensview Wastewater Treatment Plant was identified in 2003 as requiring upgrades to increase the hydraulic capacity to meet the growth projections for Kingston, Ontario and also to add advanced secondary treatment to meet the provincial effluent guidelines. A key to the success of the project, which was undertaken over a 6 year period, was the completion of a Value Engineering session. Having completed the necessary planning and preliminary design, Utilities Kingston (the operating authority for the plant) and the engineering design team completed a four day Value Engineering Workshop project to ensure that the works proposed would meet the City of Kingston’s needs and provide the best value to the customers.
The Value Engineering Workshop was deemed a success by Utilities Kingston. The outcomes produced verification that critical design decisions were correct, provided opportunity to include additional features to make operations more flexible and provided for substantial projected cost savings. As the project at the time, was the largest municipally funded capital works, Value Engineering was considered beneficial.
Design Build procurement offers a unique opportunity to identify alternatives to the design as presented by the Owner’s engineer, and to offer creative and cost effective means to complete the design and construct the project. Although a formal VE analysis is rarely performed by the DB team, alternatives are proposed, evaluated, costed and incorporated if they have merit. Part of the decision making is based on an informal risk evaluation that has three (3) perspectives: 1) Will the alternate disqualify from the project (non-responsive); 2) will the DB be successful in its implementation (especially if approvals are required) and 3) how will it impact upon schedule.
The new Yankee Stadium Station DB project had a cost of over $80 million dollars and was built specifically to offer a transportation alternative to those attending games at the new Yankee Stadium. Work included deep foundations is soft and seismically fragile soils including H-piles and drilled mini-piles, new track, new platforms, a new station building and new 260 ft. long enclosed pedestrian bridge
An independent VE Team evaluated the preliminary construction plans of an outdated traffic interchange. The VE Team found that the design was not an optimal solution to satisfy budget constraints. Using performance over cost the VE team was able to demonstrate an alternative but more expensive solution was better value.
In conjunction with Metrolinx and funded by the Province of Ontario, the Toronto Transit Commission is embarking on the Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown Project, a 25 km rapid transit expansion through the centre of Toronto. With a budget of over $8B, the line will run underground for 19 km from approximately Black Creek Drive to Kennedy Station, and then on the existing SRT alignment for an additional 6 km of combined at grade/elevated right of way. The Crosstown will include up to 26 stations, with three connections to the subway. Passengers will ride in new Light Rail Vehicles (LRVs), which will operate in 3 car consists. Two maintenance and storage facilities will also be provided to store and maintain the new fleet.
The presentation shows how value engineering will be employed in effort to deliver a safe, reliable product, at the lowest cost.
As demand increased significantly in the last year, a metal powder manufacturing company had to quickly optimize the production capacity of the plant. At first, more than 200 ideas were generated from intensive brainstorming sessions. About 35 of them were retained for cost evaluation and preliminary engineering. Since the capital expenditure for those projects ranged from $20K to $2M, it was needed to identify those which had the highest gain to cost ratio although the expected returns could not be quantified with certitude.
By combining Value Engineering and the Paired Comparison Matrix techniques it was possible to identify projects that had a significant impact for the plant as well as meeting budget constraints. The scope of work has been approved, some plant modifications have been implemented and detailed engineering initiated for more complex issues.
Probabilistic analyses are becoming more commonly used in the mining industry to assist with decision-making. Complex systems with a significant number of variable input and output conditions make traditional approaches to selection of design and management approaches more difficult. Examples of such complex systems optimization include balancing water uses and discharges as related to ore processing and tailings management on mine sites. Additionally, Failure Modes and Effects Analyses (FMEA), a structured, qualitative approach for the analysis of risks, have been undertaken to examine categories of consequences such as health and safety, environmental, financial, and reputation.
Risk of failure analyses have examined issues such as major ground falls, water inflows into mine shafts, uncontrolled discharges from mine tailing sites, and risks associated with development of carbon sequestration facilities. These approaches have been used for resource mining, carbon sequestration, nuclear waste repositories, and other major underground facilities. This presentation summarizes some of the applied probability methods being used to assist with developing priorities for risk management activities with the goal of improving overall safety, production, operation, and financial performance of mines and mining-related facilities.
Alberta's departments of Education and Infrastructure have undertaken 20 Value Analysis processes in order to gain insight into the nature of the needs and challenges as well as reach a consensus on the scope of the project to be submitted for provincial funding. The work with a broad range of stakeholders enabled the establishment of the priority order for the needs, identification of creative solutions, cost estimates of options, risk analysis and determination of value for the public investment. In addition, the local involvement resulted in a “buy-in” into the scope of the project and avoided cost escalation during the planning design and construction stages.
The presentation focuses on processes and outcomes associated with the implementation of Value Analysis in Alberta Schools. It also uses examples to illustrate the type of projects and circumstances under which such process may be successful.
Water/wastewater infrastructure - the lifeline of the community, the enabler of growth, and likely one of the highest areas of cost for a municipality. But with water and sewer charges levied directly to customers, the taxpayers, it’s also the object of great criticism. Highly publicized cost overruns and delayed schedules manifest in community frustration with these projects and the elected officials and the staff responsible to deliver them. Value Engineering can successfully maximize the cost-effectiveness of infrastructure delivery by focusing on right-sized, right-featured solutions.
Several case studies highlight the approaches used by municipal agencies to successfully deliver highly effective water/wastewater solutions to support their service improvement and growth needs.
The Edmonton North LRT is a $755 million, 3.3 km extension of Edmonton's current 21-km LRT system, involving tunnelling, street-level construction, and three new LRT stations. It is projected to add 13,200 weekday riders to the current 92,000 weekday ridership.ffordable, accessible, and environmentally friendly. During the detailed design phase for the North LRT, two major value engineering and risk analysis workshops were conducted. The first value engineering workshop was conducted at the start of the detailed design stage to confirm the preliminary design and search for new creative ideas, and the second workshop was conducted for the LRT track to select the highest value option.
This presentation showcases the benefits gained in applying the value engineering methodology. The workshop job plan, major findings, risk analysis and the current status of the project were discussed.
The Deloro Mine Site Cleanup Project deals with the complex legacy of environmental contamination caused by the former owners of a historical mining, refining, and manufacturing site at Deloro, Ontario.
The Ontario government has spent more than $32 million on a number of actions to significantly reduce the amount of arsenic coming off of the site. The Ministry of the Environment assumed responsibility for this site when the owner failed to comply with orders to stop pollution. The ministry has made significant progress in dealing with the complex and multifaceted environmental issues at the site. Final remediation plans have recently been developed and are currently underway. It is expected that the entire cleanup will take six to eight years to complete.
In 2009, the Moe initiated a Value Engineering Study to review the design of the Deloro Mine Site Cleanup. This review allowed the owners, designers and independent team members an opportunity to examine the design with an objective of improving the value of the investment as the project is carried forward.
Any development project, no matter in which industry, is connected with different kinds of risk:
Value Engineering, consequently and systematically applied in combination with FMEA (Failure Mode Effect Analysis) is an excellent management tool to creatively identify and assess all types of risks mentioned above and also to develop solutions by using different creativity techniques to prevent/eliminate or reduce risk factors and situations for a company.
This paper explains techniques which have been applied very successfully during the past 15-20 years in the manufacturing as well as in the construction industry.
Selecting the most appropriate alternative to improve operation at an intersection is a complex issue. For a number of years, the decision was solely based on satisfying a set of criteria to determine if signals are warranted.
Selecting the best value solution on the basis of a life cost analysis often leads to misleading results. Therefore, a value Engineering Study, VE, at early stages of the design, preferably at the preliminary design stage, provides the opportunity to compare viable alternatives based on a number of factors such as constructability, environmental, safety, traffic Operations as well as cost. To arrive at the right solution in a VE study, a group of professionals and safety experts examine the intersection in greater details, evaluate various alternatives and score each alternative based on the assigned weighting for each factor. The VE also provides the owner with the opportunity to make an informed decision based on either cost or performance without compromising the function
This paper supports the ability to enhance decision-making capability available in VE programs by explaining how risk-based road safety analysis can enhance value engineering studies. The focus of the presentation is the description of risk management techniques as they relate to road safety analysis, which can be incorporated into VE studies. Where applicable the presentation will also integrate the application of project performance measurement / analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and discuss how this tool can also be enhanced with risk management and integrated with risk-based road safety analysis.
The presentation has as its objective not just to explain the marriage of the VE, risk and road safety analysis but more importantly to encourage value engineering users to pursue tools that can enhance the traditional techniques and system known in the VE job plan. The presentation should appeal to wide audience, ranging from a novice to expert and to both VE facilitators and VE program managers.
The paper will be seeded with real study results.