Value Engineering or Cost Cutting.
Cost cutting is taking and
substituting materials or assembly methods in order to reduce costs. Cost cutting contributes to failures when the
long-term effect is not analyzed. Let me
use an example. A hotel was built on the
waterfront in San Diego. Granite
was the specified material for countertops, floors and veneer. The owner cut costs and changed the granite
to a marble. I had three meetings with
three different head of maintenance personnel who tried to blame the marble for
citric acid etching of the polish surface.
In each case, I began by stating
the history of the changes that occurred and why.
The maintenance personnel became
friendly to the high cost of maintenance associated with the cost cutting
changes once they understood the history of the project.
Value engineering is a true
process that accounts and documents the changes that do or do not affect the long-term
performance of the changes created.
Value engineering may or may not
work depending if the interrelationships with other components are compatible
with reasons the original choices were dependent on.
An example: A hospital was built in San
Diego. The
general contractor value engineered and deleted the cement backer board to be
used in the shower from the tile contractors
contract. The cement backer board was
assigned to the drywall contractor. The
drywall contractor installed the cement backerboard. The tile contractor was then asked to install
the weather resistive barrier paper behind the cement backer board. The tile contractor related the weather
resistive barrier paper was no longer part of the contract with the tile
contractor as the installation was eliminated when the backer board
installation was deleted. After
discussion, the tile contractor was paid a cost to install a waterproof
membrane over the backer board for direct bond of tile to the membrane in these
showers. This value-engineering example
is one where value engineering was not fully performed as the coordination was
omitted for the installation of weather resistive barrier papers or waterproof
membranes with the change in assignment to contracts.
Be cautious when an exterior area
is reduced in size to save money. An
example: Ribbons of tile and stone in concrete require drainage for moisture to
exit from the ribbon; Expansion joints on both sides of the tile and stone
abutting the concrete;
Expansion joints to divide up the
length of the concrete; and where a waterproof membrane is used, the waterproof
membrane must be presloped at least ¼ inch per foot.
Remember standing water or ponding water will contribute to failure of the
installation.
Another example is a 6-story veneer
project in San Diego. The original tile contractor attended a
meeting by the general contractor. The
general contractor related they were going to save the client a lot of money by
changing to direct bond over concrete instead of installing over a wire
reinforced mortar bed. The tile contractor refused to proceed with the contract
and warned the exterior veneer would fail.
Another tile contractor was contracted with the general contractor for
the installation of veneer with direct bond to concrete. Six years later, as predicted, the veneer
started falling off of the building structure.
The threat of litigation proceeded by the owner. The general contractor
paid for the complete removal and replacement of the entire veneer assembly and
installed the new veneer to the specifications that were originally assigned to
the original contract.
The general contractor is now suing
the installing tile contractor for the cost to install the veneer as originally
designed and specified for this building.
Moral: “Never save your
clients money on your own back!”
This article
is part of a series of articles on Stone Failures (Dec. 2000) by
Greg Mowat
Forensic Tile
Consultants
9541 Vervain Street
San Diego, CA 92129-3523
(858) 484-8118, Fax 484-8302
