Do Value Engineering Studies Need Facilitators? Evidence from Indonesia's Public-Sector Project Owners Using PLS-SEM 

Value Engineering (VE) has been mandated for Indonesian public infrastructure projects since Peraturan Menteri Pekerjaan Umum No. 06/PRT/M/2007, giving Indonesia nearly two decades of enforced VE practice on state building projects. Despite this regulatory maturity, empirical Indonesian VE research has focused almost exclusively on technical implementation, while the methodological components that determine whether VE actually works have remained untested. The SAVE International Value Methodology (VM) Guide identifies five essential methodological components — Systematic Process (SP), Multidisciplinary Team (MT), VM Facilitator (VF), Function Analysis (FA), and Value Improvement — yet to the best of our knowledge, no prior study, in Indonesia or internationally, has empirically tested all five components together within a single PLS-SEM structural model. The VM Facilitator, in particular, has received little empirical scrutiny. It is theoretically positioned as a distinct methodological input: a Certified Value Specialist (CVS) who owns methodological discipline, separate from the executing multidisciplinary team and from the systematic process itself. This study evaluates the methodological role of the VM Facilitator using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Two structural models were compared: a baseline model with SP, MT, FA, and Value Outcome (VO); and an extended model that adds VF as a distinct latent predictor of FA and VO. Questionnaire data were collected from 148 construction stakeholders, of whom 81.5% represented government project owners. Function Analysis remained the primary mediator linking methodological components to Value Outcome. Adding the VM Facilitator increased R²(FA) from 0.694 to 0.778, while the direct effect of the Multidisciplinary Team on Function Analysis decreased from β = 0.702 to β = 0.388. The VM Facilitator emerged as the largest direct predictor of Function Analysis (β = 0.461, p < 0.001), with a significant indirect effect on Value Outcome (β = 0.158, p = 0.026; total effect β = 0.401, p < 0.001). These findings provide the first empirical evidence in Indonesia that facilitator involvement is a distinct project management capability, supporting structured facilitator training and CVS certification to strengthen publicly funded urban infrastructure delivery.