Value Engineering - Design-Build for Water and Wastewater Projects - page 258

To ensure the owner was at ease with how project costs were captured and invoiced,
open-book accounting with full access to internal cost-control systems was used.
This approach created trust and contributed to a successful outcome.
Value Engineering Lowers Project Cost Without Sacrificing Quality or
Design Intent
The CMAR was able to lower the project's cost to within the City's budget without
sacrificing quality or function through value engineering. The owner, designer, and
CMAR were able to innovate and reduce the project cost by approximately $2.1 mil-
lion despite several engineering and construction issues encountered during design
development. Some of the value engineering ideas accepted by the owner are as
follows:
• Resequenced construction to reduce project duration and associated general
conditions.
• Added alternative process equipment manufacturers to yield greater compe-
tition and cost reduction.
• Reduced the number of filters from three to two, which lowered costs while
still meeting regulatory and capacity needs.
• Constructed process tank baffle walls from reinforced fiberglass plas-
tic in lieu of concrete to shorten schedule and reduce associated general
conditions.
• Refined the painting schedule such that protective coatings were only
applied in corrosive areas.
• Used floating mixers in lieu of submersible mixers, which reduced cost
while still meeting performance requirements.
• Included a material escalation clause in the contract, which lowered proj-
ect cost by eliminating all related material escalation contingency of the
subcontractors.
Success Outcomes
By using CMAR, the overall project schedule was shortened by six months, as com-
pared to DBB delivery, which satisfied the strict time line of the City's spray field
sales agreement. In addition, $300,000 of savings was returned to the City at project
completion, representing its portion of the shared project savings.