Impact of Value Engineering on the Selection of Finishing Materials of Sustainable Interiors in Egypt

Abstract

With increasing the number of new construction large-scale and mega projects in Egypt, it becomes an obligation rather than a need to develop economic studies in order to control and direct the assigned budgets properly. This is in addition to the urgent need to adopt sustainability in line with Egypt’s vision 2030 for sustainable development. Barriers are found towards the usage of sustainable interior materials such as its high initial costs and lack of awareness about it. One of the powerful studies concerning these issues is value engineering studies which help in the selection of materials especially interior finishing materials where it has an impact on project’s overall quality and budget to select a material and reject another. Value engineering studies are concerned with cost and function studies to develop alternatives and select optimum choices for interior finishes. The main aim of the study is to provide general prerequisites and proposed selection criteria for the finishing materials of sustainable interiors through value engineering studies and sustainability concepts to be used by key stakeholders or decision makers in the materials’ selection process of new large scale and mega projects in Egypt. In addition to proposing an action plan for real adoption of both value engineering studies and sustainable interior materials in Egypt. In order to achieve this aim, the researcher went through a literature review for a set of previous studies and research about sustainable interiors and value engineering in addition to studying the relation and mutual impact between them. The researcher also analyzes foreign, Arabian and Egyptian projects that apply value engineering studies or use sustainable interior materials or both in order to highlight application benefits, problems and update the preliminary selection criteria developed from literature review chapters. For a comprehensive vision for the current situation in Egypt, the researcher made an online survey questionnaire with a sample size of 50 engineers in different fields like architecture, interior design, BOQ and specifications, management, technical office and site engineers working in 17 leading architecture and consulting firms in Egypt. In addition to 36 personal interviews directed towards key stakeholders and decision makers in any new large scale project who are: clients, designers, owners, consultants and suppliers with an objective to develop a final updated version of the selection criteria of sustainable interior materials beside general prerequisites. Finally, for the objective of making a preliminary validation for the criteria, the researcher analyzes 4 case studies from the educational sector in order to assess the