Reinforced concrete structural design would yield member sizes and reinforcement. A design is optimum when utilization ratio of actual member reaches as close as to unity. The question is what is the utilization ratio below which you consider as un-economical.
In all commercial software the dimensions of members are assigned in the beginning. Accordingly the stiffness of the members are also taken in calculations accordingly. Since in most of the designs the member sizes are kept similar the designs will never meet this unity criteria. If you want to optimise then it will become tedious iteration problem which one has to manually resolve.
Against the RCC structures, if you design steel structures then there are provisions to optimize the design with minimum weight criteria.
It actually depends on the type of the structural member and spans and loads. But, generally I believe if most members have capacity ratio below 0.60 : 0.70
This design is not economic for sure.
And for large scale projects this ratio becomes higher as any saving in sections and reinforcement may translates into millions. Another important factor to be considered in this issue is contractor capabilities and his work quality.
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