“Don’t tell yourself to think outside the box, tell yourself there is no box.” That’s the motto of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers employee Dale Hartmann, recent recipient of the 2025 Distinguished Service in Government award by the U.S. Advocacy for Value committee, established by SAVE International to promote and advocate maximizing value for U.S. federal, state, and local government organizations.
The SAVE International organization is devoted to promoting what’s known as “value engineering (VE)” or “value methodology” across the government and private industry. In simple terms, the value methodology is a process to help optimize performance and resources (time, manpower, money, etc.) using creative and innovative solutions.
Hartmann, who works for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Middle East District, said what he means by “there is no box,” is that people shouldn’t limit themselves to just the problem on hand but all possible things that might make a project better.
“As an example, if the project is “build a generator,” the “there is no box,” idea might be to investigate drilling for natural gas to power the generator. The original task might not require it be natural gas powered but that doesn’t mean it’s not an idea that could result in a resource savings,”
said Hartmann.
Hartmann, who leads the District’s Contingency Standard Design Branch and USACE’s Center of Standardization for Nonpermanent Facilities (COS) said he’s always been an advocate for value methodology but finds it gratifying to see others become convinced from the results.
“Some of our mission partners were originally skeptical. There’s a mentality that “if I spend less, I’ll get less,” and that’s not necessarily the case. Value methodology is not about cutting corners but giving the customer more of what’s important to them. In some cases, that’s cost savings, but it could also be time to project completion or saving more over the long term through less maintenance.”
Hartmann’s work with the COS is a textbook example of value methodology at work.
USACE’s COS maintains a library of off the shelf designs that can be adapted to almost any purpose from living quarters to aircraft hangars. The “nonpermanent” designation has to do with building codes and not necessarily how long the buildings can last (in some cases up to 25 years). Because the designs already exist, are highly adaptable and meant to use locally procured materials, they are often significantly cheaper and faster to build than creating something from scratch.
Hartmann and his team conduct value engineering studies on all the designs before they finalize them, so the cost savings are built in. While customers usually have to pay for a value engineering study, using a COS design essentially has it built in. In value engineering this is known as cost avoidance.
Mandy Bianchini, USACE’s Assistant Chief Value Officer said Hartmann’s ability to demonstrate to mission partners that quality and value go together were a big factor in his award.
“Tying quality to value and delivering value are 2 concepts that we’re trying to push in the Enterprise Value Program (EVP). “Value thinking” and the “Value concept” result in benefits well beyond a typical VE study on a project. That’s what Dale does within his program, and why he won this award,” said Bianchini.
Hartmann was also recognized for his advocacy in broadening the use of value methodology, seeing its potential beyond conventional projects and encouraging project management teams to adapt its practices.
Bianchini said that even though it sometimes takes some convincing to get people to adopt value methodology-based solutions, most people use it in their everyday lives without even realizing it.
“It was developed in the manufacturing world during WWII, and the concepts of Value apply to everything – projects, processes, products, services, and organizations. Which car are you going to buy? Where are you going to send your kid to college? How do we restructure the organization to optimize effectiveness and efficiency? We make value decisions every day!”
Hartmann’s efforts achieved an impressive $20 million in cost savings and cost avoidance for Transatlantic Division and Middle East District mission partners. Across USACE, the Value Program contributes an average of $500 million in total cost savings and avoidance annually.