Abstract
Highway improvement and maintenance have supplied the economic development and enhanced our life convenience greatly. However the economic and social conditions changed heavily in Japan. The long period economic inactivation, the low birthrate and longevity constrain the investment to public projects strictly. The public works meet the criticism for the estimation of the effect and the mismatching between the projects and the local needs with any new highway improvement project contemporaneously. In this study, I applied VE (Value Engineering) as an evaluation approach for the highway improvement plans. The work started with the function definition and finished with the proposal of design principles on improvement plan. Finally, the study verified the effect of VE as a valid approach for the evaluation of highway improvement plans to help us to choose the best plan fitting with all of conditions and limitations.
