Value engineering
Value engineering, or VE, is the process of finding lower-cost ways to deliver the same function, usually triggered when a project comes in over budget.
Also written as VE, value engineering proposal.
Last updated
Reviewed by Eric Collin · President and Founder of Firmo Construction, 20+ years in preconstruction and bid evaluation
In its original and stricter sense, VE preserves function while reducing cost — a different material, a simpler detail, a change in sequence that saves labour. The function delivered is meant to be unchanged.
In practice the term is also applied to straightforward scope reduction, which is a different thing: removing work is not the same as delivering it more cheaply. Both go under the same heading on most projects, so it is worth establishing which is meant before agreeing to a VE list.
Subcontractors often submit VE ideas with their bids, and this is where it interacts with comparison. A VE proposal is not part of the base scope, so it cannot sit in the base column — a bidder whose price already assumes its own VE accepted is not bidding the documents, and comparing that number against bidders who did is the clearest possible apples-to-oranges error.
- Alternate vs value engineering
What is the difference between an alternate and value engineering?
- Alternate
An alternate is separately priced scope, added to or deducted from the base bid, that lets the owner decide at award whether to include it.
- Scope of work
A scope of work is the written definition of what a package or contract covers — the work a bidder is being asked to price.
- Apples-to-apples comparison
An apples-to-apples comparison is one where every bid covers the same scope, so the prices differ only by what the bidders charge rather than by what they included.
Catch every gap before you award
MyLevelBid reads every bid line by line, maps them to one scope, and flags what nobody carried.
Request a demo