Identifying, Communicating, and Responding to Project Value Interests

Abstract

One of the most challenging aspects of project development and execution is to identify and define project elements, components, or attributes that add value to owner organizations. In addition to typical delivery requirements such as cost and schedule, there are a number of other project-specific attributes that can increase project profitability and/or reduce risks. Often owner organizations are not fully aware of these attributes, or fail to properly communicate them to the contractors. As a result, the engineering and construction (E&C) community is unable to efficiently respond to the customer’s expectations. The E&C focus becomes a wide variety of perceived client’s value interests, instead of few important ones. Thus, a two-year study sponsored by the Construction Industry Institute was initiated to develop a standard work process and a tool that could assist in identifying owners’ project value interests, provide a standardized form for their communication, and aid in identifying an appropriate E&C response strategy. This paper presents the four-step research approach based on industry survey data collection, discusses study results, and describes the Microsoft Excel tool that supports this process.