The development of life-cycle costing for buildings

Abstract

The history of the application of life-cycle costing (LCC) began in the UK in the late 1950s and, until now, the state of its development as a concept is not clear. A literature review is presented that shows the changing approaches to LCC by drawing on four major academic journals and 45 peer-reviewed papers. The review verifies that there is a revival of interest in using LCC in tandem with other life-cycle methodologies for research on sustainable building. It also presents a set of methods that are applicable to model and estimate the life-cycle costs of ‘conventional’ and ‘green’ buildings with the objective of distinguishing them. Through the information gathered, it provides a centralized source of reference for the assumptions used in LCC calculations concerning some key input parameters. The finding shows an increasing trend of publications on the evaluation of economic options for green building designs and performance. The directions are clear that the concepts and methods have to evolve to a state where they will help to integrate and optimize economic, social and environmental considerations to deliver more sustainable built environments in the future.

Keywords:

• capital cost
• green building
• life-cycle costing
• running cost
• sustainable buildings
• value creation
• whole-life costs

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the three anonymous referees for their constructive comments and helpful suggestions made on an earlier version of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

The review work conducted for publication was wholly funded by the National University of Singapore [grant number R296000144646].