Could AI Transform Value Engineering for Quantity Surveyors? (EP 289)
transcript
show notes
In this episode, Paul is joined by Martin Balaam, CEO and Founder of Pimberly, to explore a problem almost every Quantity Surveyor has encountered:
You've been asked to value engineer a package and find an equivalent product. Where do you actually start?
Paul takes the conversation back to his time working on Battersea Power Station, where finding an alternative to a specified product eventually unlocked around £1.5m in commercial savings — but took months of research, conversations, technical reviews and meetings to get there.
Why should finding a genuinely equivalent product be so difficult?
Martin explains how fragmented construction product information remains, with critical data spread across specifications, manufacturers' websites, technical PDFs and different systems — often described completely differently by different suppliers.
The conversation explores:
- what "or equivalent" really means when trying to value engineer a specification;
- how QSs should distinguish between technical requirements and more subjective considerations such as aesthetics, carbon, origin and client preference;
- why poor and inconsistent product data makes comparing alternatives so difficult;
- how better structured product information could transform value engineering and procurement;
- what happens when AI gets access to properly structured construction product data;
- whether an AI agent could eventually search hundreds of products and identify the best alternatives based on price, programme, carbon, warranty and technical performance;
- how QSs can already use AI to interrogate specifications and identify potential VE opportunities;
- why the quality of the instructions and data you give AI remains critical; and
- what contractors should start capturing during procurement today to make better commercial decisions tomorrow.
Martin paints a fascinating picture of where this could ultimately go.
Instead of a QS spending months researching alternatives, an AI agent could potentially interrogate the specification, search the market and return a shortlist of technically compliant products — showing the commercial and programme trade-offs of each.
Perhaps eventually it could even order the samples ahead of the design meeting.
For Quantity Surveyors and Commercial Managers, that could fundamentally change how we approach value engineering, product selection and procurement.
A practical look at a very familiar construction problem — and how data and AI could make solving it dramatically easier.
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This episode is sponsored by:
- clearnorth — The QS People: https://www.clearnorth.co.uk/
- CLIC — The Commercial Leadership Collective: https://www.the-clic.co.uk/
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