Life Cycle Costing BG67 2016

BSRIA (the Building Services Research and Information Association) is a non-profit distributing, member-based association with a mission ‘to make buildings better.’

BSRIA guide, Life Cycle Costing (BG67/2016) was written by David Churcher and Peter Tse and published in March 2016. It replaced Whole Life Costing BG5/2008 and is available as part of BSRIA’s carbon and cost analysis set.

Life cycle costing is an economic assessment of the discounted net present value of life cycle costs, carried out using profiles of current and future costs and benefits. There is increasing emphasis on life cycle costing to ensure all costs are taken into account during the decision-making process, not just those for capital investment. Whilst the guide accepts some cynics believe life cycle costs are just an educated guesses, it proposes this is a marked improvement on an uneducated guess.

The guide is relevant to clients, estate managers, engineers, consultants, quantity surveyors and cost advisers. It presents a practical approach to life cycle costing for the construction and operation of buildings, describing a process for the calculation of life cycle costs, and including examples showing how different stages of the process relate to one another, illustrating how the results are obtained and what they mean.

It breaks life cycle costing down into five, sequential steps:

Defining the problem.
Alternative solutions.
Calculating life cycle costs.
Fine-tuning life cycle costs.
Interpreting the results.

The guide is deliberately short, omitting some of the more complex aspects of life cycle costing, but it is compatible with relevant parts of ISO 15686 Buildings and constructed assets -- Service-life planning, such as Part 5: Life-cycle costing. It also complements the move towards building information modelling (BIM), suggesting that the appreciation of life cycle issues is fundamental to the adoption of BIM Level 2.

--BSRIA