الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Coincide with the Egyptian government trend in the last period for the development and improvement of the highway network in Egypt and its eagerness to raise the efficiency of the network with the required quality and lowest cost due to the reduced funding sources, it was necessary to find a scientific framework seeks to achieve these goals through the application of Value Engineering (VE) in highway projects and integrating safety performance of highway design alternatives in value engineering analysis. VE can be used to establish project scope, support effective decision making, increase project performance and quality. Therefore, it is necessary to raise awareness of the importance of applying VE in construction projects in Egypt, especially in highway projects. Applying VE very early in highway projects simplifies the development of design alternatives and choosing the right project, rather than trying to optimize the design later. The use of VE at initial stage allows the project team to quickly define the concept of the project. This research focus on the importance of value engineering process in highway projects during the design phase, studying its effectiveness to evaluate the different highway design alternatives in development and improvement of highway projects and ensuring that these projects provide the needed functions efficiently, reliably, and at the lowest overall cost. It also focuses on how to examine these alternatives and judge their compatibility with the design specifications, especially the suitability of these alternatives to the highway safety level required on the road under study. One of the important research findings was providing a methodology to quantify highway safety impacts during the development of the highway design alternatives. This quantifying assists VE specialists to identify and recommend required safety enhancements for these alternatives. And therefore, any unexpected increasing in crash frequency can be eliminated before implementing the proposed design alternative. The research emphasizes the importance of applying value engineering in the field of roads in Egypt because it has a great effectiveness in reducing unnecessary expenses and supporting decision-makers in selecting the best design alternatives that achieves the desired project goals. So, the transport authorities in Egypt must introduce a law that force conducting a Value Engineering study for highway projects. The research also resulted in developing framework to streamline a systematic approach that can be used for any VE study related to highway projects. |