ENHANCING FLEXIBILITY IN THE PROJECT SCOPE WITH THE HELP OF VALUE ENGINEERING Organizational behavior Stakeholder driven barriers Solution oriented thinking Limited involvement of the business owner after allotting the budget Limited transparency in decision making Risk averse behavior of the project managers and client Stakeholder needs are unknown Poor communication among the stakeholders Self-interest of the stakeholders Difference in perception among the stakeholders Lack of trust among the stakeholders Limited involvement of the stakeholders Table: Barriers for enhancing flexibility in project scope. Limited awareness Limited awareness of the enablers Limited training or coaching for interpreting the functions Available preparation time Contractual barriers Policy, standards, interface, norms, guidelines, laws and regulations Contractual limitation The next phase of the research was the case analysis. Two cases were investigated in detail and then compared. In the first case, the scope was developed with limited involvement of the stakeholders. The stakeholders were not brought together at the table and their interest were not discussed with the client. Once the original scope was developed, the stakeholders did not accept the scope and it could not be implemented. As there was hindrance from the stakeholders during the implementation of the original scope, there was a need for redefining the scope together with the stakeholders. That is the time Value Engineering (VE) was introduced in the project for developing the scope of the project with the support of the stakeholders. As opposed to the first case, the second case took a proactive approach as VE was performed at the beginning of the project before the development of the scope. It was observed that during the VE workshop, the stakeholders were brought together at the table and their functional needs were discussed. During this process, all the stakeholders became aware about each other’s interests. All the interest were brought together and an efficient scope was mutually developed with the support of all the stakeholders. The stakeholders were in a better position to negotiate with each other as they could understand the interests of one another. This reflects that performing VE at the initial level will help the stakeholders to be in a better position to negotiate and come up with an efficient solution. Not bringing the stakeholders together during the development of the scope may lead to hindrance during the implementation of the project scope which will eventually lead to delays in project. During the detailed analysis of the two cases, the most common barrier for enhancing the flexibility of project scope that was observed in the cases was ‘lack of trust’. As mentioned earlier, VE was introduced in the two cases at different timepoints. The two cases were compared to each other which helped to build a relationship between VE and flexibility in project scope. The total number of barriers for enhancing flexibility in project scope experienced by the practitioners in the first case until the VE was performed was 13. On the other hand, the total number of barriers experienced by the practitioners in the second case, where VE was performed from the beginning, was 4 barriers in total. This reflects that VE has helped to resolve the barriers experienced by the practitioners in the case where VE was introduced in the project as a proactive approach. Overall, it was observed that VE played a supporting role in enhancing the flexibility of project scope. 00: 38
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