What is Value Engineering (VE)?
In accordance with the Federal Highway Administration Federal-aid Highway program, MnDOT is required to establish a program to assure that Value Engineering studies are performed on all federal-aid highway projects; and that all resulting, approved recommendations are incorporated into the plans, specifications and project estimate.
The FHWA defines VE as:
"The systematic application of recognized techniques by a multi-disciplined team to identify the function of a product or service, establish a worth for that function, generate alternatives through the use of creative thinking, and provide the needed functions to accomplish the original purpose of the project, reliably, and at the lowest life-cycle cost without sacrificing safety, necessary quality, and environmental attributes of the project. The successful application of the VE process can contribute measurable benefits to the quality of the surface transportation improvement projects and to the effective delivery of the overall Federal-Aid Highway Program."
State value engineer’s responsibility
The Office of Project Management and Technical Support currently manages MnDOT’s VE program. The State Value Engineer is responsible for documenting the results of VE studies (both workshop and change proposals) for inclusion in the annual VE status report that is submitted to the FHWA at the end of the Federal Fiscal year (September 30). The State Value Engineer provides all necessary VE related assistance to the Project Managers.