Life Cycle Costing

Starting with the basics, what is the purpose of life cycle costing?  Life cycle costing analysis (LCCA or LCC for short) is the most accurate way to increase your building’s project savings by comparing different design alternatives. As opposed to more commonly used ROI-based calculations, LCC is conducted based on long-term costs and savings, keeping in mind the fact that they are interconnected. The “life cycle” part means that LCC assesses all costs that occur over the building’s lifetime including construction costs, maintaining, operating, and end-of-life related costs. To be more specific, the lifespan of a building consists of five main stages: concept planning, design, construction, operations, and replacement or disposal. Life cycle costing is particularly useful for the estimating total costs in the early stage of a project . The life cycle costing process usually includes the following steps:  • planning of the life cycle costing analysis (e.g. definition of objectives);  •