Over 18 months ago a number of “hands on” practitioners, from the grass roots of the industry, came together to share some thoughts and views on how “value” and “added value” could be gained from the investment that goes in to construction projects across Wales. It was an opportunity to share their experiences, potential solutions, good practices and from time to time, a few things which didn’t quite work out!

The thing is “value” is a subjective concept. It means different things to different people. The trick for those delivering construction services is to identify what the customer or stakeholder perceives important to them and how does it increase the benefit or worth of the product or service. The problem is that what’s important to one person is not necessarily important, or as important, to the next person.

Having debated the concept of value and how it can be delivered these practitioners set out to develop a forum where others could contribute to the debate and share their experiences – good and bad! And this is where the idea of a “How2” guide came from.

The intention of this web-based guide is to offer advice and guidance on where value can be added, who is best placed to do it and how they can do it. It follows the 5 key stages of a construction project from concept on to planning, design, delivery and through to operation and offers potential interventions at each of these stages. It’s been designed in a relatively simple fashion so as not to “over power” the user and in many cases it signposts the visitor to other websites containing areas of best practice and case studies. It applies to both building and civil engineering projects but obviously the terminology fluctuates from time to time!

Most importantly it’s not a prescriptive and definitive rule book – it’s a guide to how best value can be achieved based on the views, opinions and experiences of many practitioners across the construction industry in Wales. And it certainly doesn’t set out to be “perfect”!

Why not have a go by following the How2 Website. If you agree or disagree with anything or feel you can add to the contents let us know via Twitter and we can work together as an industry to “add value”.