Kamran Emami - Managing Director, Kuritkara Consulting Engineers
Jafar Zirahi - Managing Director, Hormozgan Water Authority.
Mohammad Ali Sharifian

This paper addresses value engineered approach to construction dispute resolution. The powerful job plan of VE along with the facilitating and synergic participation of neutral experts and value specialists has proven to be very effective in solving technical and legal disputes in many large projects.VE effort regards at the parties as Stakeholders working towards resolution. The VE leader works with the Stakeholders to align their perceptions with the reality of the case’s technical aspects. Using a project management based approach, direct access to data by all parties is maintained and communication channels are kept open. As a result, the time to reach resolution is dramatically reduced. In addition to the time savings, the overall cost is reduced as well.The dispute over the dredging for Qeshm submarine water pipeline project in South of Iran resulted in contract termination and the project suffered a considerable delay due to a number of unsuccessful biddings. At last a synergic VE team solved the technical dispute in less than 4 months. It is believed that if there had been a VE workshop during the dredging dispute, a win-all scenario could have been devised to prevent the termination of construction contract and subsequently the project could have been completed much earlier.

Value Engineering, Dispute resolution, submarine water pipeline, Neutral experts, Synergic teamwork