Abstract
Civil Engineering Project is a section of Public Work Project with the heaviest social responsibility. In reality, its great contribution so far made in many facets of the development of modern communities in Japan, however, has never been thought as being properly evaluated nor appreciated in general. Further, particularly after the so-called “post-bubble” fall of the national economy of the late 1980’s, there is a rising public misconception that any large-scale public work projects tend to be seen simply as wasting governmental budgets when the government as the sole owner of public works Project is being forced to sustain on a strictly curtailed budget and its allotments.
When it can be said that, even though Japan’s civil engineers are proud to have built up a highly sound social capital, the glory of their contribution has not enough been publicly recognized. Why is this gap? The authors have come to believe that the biggest reason for this is an evident “disparity of values” between the civil engineering professionals and the general users. Thus, the authors have come to realize that the shortest way to fill the gap should be for all civil engineering practitioners to equip themselves with good skills to explicitly enhance the value of their own work. This paper, from a eider perspective all civil engineering processes, discusses how the systematic Value Engineering principles and methodologies can best serve as an essential instrument with which to enhance the value of the civil engineering business.
