Evaluating Effectiveness of BIM-based Idea Bank during VE Workshop

Value Engineering has been recognized as one of the construction management techniques for improving the value and benefits of whole project. However, due to the lack of the past data and inefficient free-thinking techniques, the idea generation during VE workshop is still inefficient and ineffective. Even though various studies related to theoretical methodology and technical systems relevant to database were conducted, VE team still mainly rely on their experience for idea generation. With this regard, this study suggests an approach of BIM-based idea bank and assesses its effectiveness by interviewing 20 VE experts in the industry. This approach covers the three steps of idea generation, consisting of 1) Developing BIM based VE database, 2) Generating VE ideas, 3) Updating VE ideas. The result showed that the proposed approach has great potentials to support VE team and improve the quality of VE ideas during creativity phase.