Value engineering is a system in which corrective measures are analyzed and applied to a good or service in which the aim is to maximize resources and reduce production costs, maintaining its functionality, quality and initial reliability or improving them, without leaving aside the customer's expectations.[1][2]​.

Value engineering or value method has its origins in General Electric during World War II, where they lived in a context full of shortages of qualified labor, raw materials and components. Given the situation, Lawrence D. Miles and Harry Erlicher, GE Engineers in 1940, found it necessary to look for acceptable substitutes for the generation of products. When implementing this process, they realized that substitutions reduced costs and a substantial improvement in the product, so Miles, with the support of his superiors at GE, developed and perfected the technique he called “Value Analysis” (Watson, G., 2005).

Based on the success experienced by General Electric, the concept spread throughout private industry due to its ability to generate a high return at a relatively low investment. The first government organization to implement it was the Department of Defense of Ships in the United States") in 1954, calling the program “Value Engineering", the name by which it is currently known and it matured in the 60's after having been approved for use by the United States Department of Defense in 1961 (Watson, G., 2005).

On the other hand, the concepts and methods applied in value engineering have influenced the development of Quality Function Deployment (QFD), the Theory of Problem Solving Inventiveness (TRIZ), the lean methods of the Toyota Production System (TPS) and have been employed in the water and wastewater industry since the mid-1970s in cities such as New York, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco "San Francisco (California)") and San Diego "San Diego (California)") (Watson, G., 2005).

According to Meeker, D. & McWilliams, F. (2011), who publish for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the steps that value engineering follows are: