Amend the Carter amendment to CSHB 1 adding a rider after the
appropriations to the Texas Department of Transportation to read as
follows:
      Strike the first paragraph of the rider and substitute the
following:
      ____.  VALUE ENGINEERING REQUIRED IN CERTAIN PROJECTS. The
Texas Department of Transportation shall initiate a pilot program
to employ value engineering.  The department may appoint an
advisory committee with not less than three members each from the
Consulting Engineers Council of Texas, Inc., and the Texas Society
of Professional Engineers to perform value engineering on projects
determined by the department that cost more than $2 million.
      For the purposes of this section, "value engineering" shall
mean a systematic process of review and analysis of an engineering
project by a team of persons not originally involved in the
project. Such team may offer suggestions which would improve
project quality and reduce total project cost, ranging from
combination or elimination of inefficient or expensive parts or
steps in the original proposal to total redesign of the project
using different technologies, material, or methods.
      After the review, the executive director of the Commission
may adopt the recommendations of the advisory committee for lower
cost or better value for the State of Texas.