|
|
WHOLE-LIFE COST
-
The whole-life cost of a building can be defined as:
"The cost of acquiring, operating and maintaining a building over its whole life through to disposal"
Whole-life costing can be characterised as a system that quantifies financial values for buildings from inception and throughout the building's life. It is an approach that balances capital with revenue costs to achieve an optimum solution over a building's whole life.
This technique, whilst not in itself new, has over recent years become accepted best practice in construction procurement. Whole-life costing can be used at any stage of the procurement process and can be used at the levels of facility, function, system and component. This includes everything from initial design to end-of-life.
Capturing whole life cost
It is estimated that up to 80% of a building's whole-life cost can be attributed to running, maintenance and refurbishment costs. Consequently, there are spikes in expenditure at 10 years and every five years after that.
The initial choice of materials and the way that they are protected obviously plays an important role within the maintenance and refurbishment costs of a building over its lifetime. They therefore have a very large influence on the whole-life cost profile of the project.
Smoothing the expenditure
Life cycle expenditure tends to inherently produce "spiky" profiles with large peaks at 10,15,20,25 years
Information supplied by Turner and Townsend, Construction and Management Consultants
|
|
|
