Today, everyone is looking to save on construction costs. Construction company C.W. Driver Cos. uses a value engineering strategy to save costs for all construction projects without sacrificing on design or quality of the property. Value engineering starts before ground breaking, when builders can work with developers to find out where costs can be curbed. Some of these methods include polished concrete flooring, standing seam metal panels in place of aluminum composite metal panels, and vinyl windows.

“In a market with ever-increasing labor and construction costs, pricing is unpredictable,” David Amundson, project executive at C.W. Driver Cos., tells GlobeSt.com. “We take a target value approach for all of our clients but particularly for higher education facilities. If you tell us what the program is that you are trying to accomplish, we will figure out a way to get you there. When we make many of these changes, no one will know the difference in the end product except for the people behind the scenes. Ultimately, we are trying to find avenues to get the end user a better value for the same program that they are after.”

While this strategy is applicable to every asset class and development type, C.W. Driver typically uses it on higher education projects, where budgets are predetermined and inflexible. “On a higher education project, you have DSA approvals, and once you have those approvals, you don't want to make changes and have to go back to get approvals,” says Amundson. “That is a big concern. You don't want to lose that time. If we can get early enough to effect change before it is being designed, the project only has to be designed once.”

There are a number of ways to save during construction, and the options and cost savings change project to project. Most importantly, Amundson says that the end result is never altered. “The original concept is to effect change where the program doesn't change,” he explains. “That could be a simple change, like raising the building a few inches so that you don't have to export the dirt. That is a simple change that can save a few hundred thousand dollars on dirt export. Every building is different and every job is different.”

While many companies are generating a cost savings by installing lower end finishes, Amundson says that is not the company's focus. “The focus on finishes is typically the last resort, and it is the last thing that we want to touch,” he adds.

Higher education clients have been open to implementing this strategy, which involves more communication earlier in the process and a different approach to preconstruction. “Most higher education projects see the value in this process, because they aren't experts in building,” says Amundson. “They have commitments to the community, and they seem to be moving forward with the commitments and moving forward with the budgets that they have.”