The article aims to identify the scientific challenges and point out future research directions on Cost Engineering. The research areas covered in this article include Design Cost; Manufacturing Cost; Operating Cost; Life Cycle Cost; Risk and Uncertainty management and Affordability Engineering. Collected information at the Academic Forum on Cost Engineering held at Cranfield University in 2008 and further literature review findings are presented. The forum set the scope of the Cost Engineering research, a brainstorming was held on the forum and literatures were further reviewed to understand the current and future practices in cost engineering. The main benefits of the article include coverage of the current research on cost engineering from different perspectives and the future research areas on Cost Engineering.

Customisation is a rapidly growing business model that enables companies to deliver products with increased customer value. In this paper, an approach for documentation and knowledge management of systems supporting the design and manufacture of customised products is explored. Due to shifting prerequisite over time, the system encapsulated rules and models have to be updated and refined. Both the system and the solutions generated for a single specification will change over time. This affects product management and the company's ability to meet legislation and customers' requirements regarding documentation and traceability, as well as the ability to provide services, maintenance and supply spare parts. This work addresses these challenges and introduces a concept with required functionality for capturing, structuring, searching, retrieving, viewing, and editing a system's embedded information and knowledge. The concept has been developed and applied to a real case in collaboration with industry.