New practical innovative tool for the value engineering ideation process with the oriented creativity matrix

This study attempts to solve the challenges facing value engineering due to the shortage in the creativity stage via using an innovative tool during the ideation process to arrange the ideas' creation; this tool is the Oriented Creativity Matrix (OCM) to ensure communication and considering the designer concern during that process. This shortage could be either the inapplicability of the proposals generated from the creativity stage or the inability to discover workable proposals. Per the previous research, many implementation challenges were reported as roadblocks impeding the value engineering proposals. To encounter those challenges, the OCM method was set, including identifying the potential altering aspects by which the sub-alternatives are generated and then composed to configure the main alternatives. Generating alternatives via the pre-identified alteration aspects promotes the coverage of all potential alternatives and ensures their performance from the perspective of each of them. Furthermore, this procedure establishes clear ground rules for the participants in the creativity stage, unifying their efforts to propose sub-alternatives to resolve the problem from an ascertained perspective rather than wasting efforts to defend their pre-desired main alternatives without due consideration for each perspective. To specify the most affective alteration aspects, a questionnaire distributed to the value engineering (VE) specialist to ensure the completeness of the included aspects and track any further alteration aspects. Per the collected data via the questionnaire, the altering aspects of completeness were statistically proved, and the OCM method was designed and elaborated to facilitate its usage in the VE ideation process.