Life Cycle Costing (LCC) also called Whole Life Costing is a technique to establish the total cost of constructing and running your building through its entire life-span from acquisition to refurbishment or eventual demolition.

The results of an LCC analysis can be used to assist in calculating the lowest cost options for the entire life building. As the graph below shows construction costs typically account for a small percentage of the overall cost of running and maintaining a building LCC analysis focuses on the use of the best long-term value building design.

Best value design and specification

Knowledge of a building's costs over its full life span is important in achieving best value from both the capital costs of constructing the building, and the related ongoing costs of operating it. LCC helps you to make well informed design decisions, and to select the most suitable building materials, components and systems. For example an increase in initial costs from the installation of a higher specification of insulation may over time result in lower heating costs. 

Better building performance

Life Cycle costing will enable you to minimise maintenance problems - for example from the failure of building components that must then be replaced or repaired with difficultly and high cost. A planned and costed maintenance programme minimises this risk which will have a negative impact in terms of unexpected costs, disturbance and loss of income.

Durability assessment

Our durability assessment service defines your requirements for the durability of a building, and assesses design, specification and construction proposals against these. This will help you to reduce repair and disruption costs, minimise waste and achieve more sustainable construction.

Our services are supported by extensive knowledge and experience of building defects will help you make important decisions such as:

•    Rebuild or refurbish
•    The design most appropriate, sustainable and efficient for    
     your needs
•    Best life-cycle value of specifications - for example,             
     aluminium windows or timber
•    Best life-cycle value of component standards - for example,
     roofing materials

Whilst it is impossible to accurately predict the future our proactive and informed approach will assist in giving you the best long-term value for your project from ‘Cradle to Grave’ and will ultimately save you time and money.