LIFE CYCLE COST ANALYSIS OF BUILDING COMPONENTS

With ever increasing investments both by industry and Government together with complications of the continuous explosion in technology, considerable inflation in ,cost of materials, labour, energy, etc and the changing international and national environments, decisions based on initial costs have often proved to be counter-productive and uneconomical. In particular, where public money is involved, it becomes necessary to ensure the maximum benefits out of every investment. In this situation, a systematic methodology for assessing the total cost of an asset or proposed investment over its entire operating life, particularly to equate various choices open to the decision making authority, becomes essential. Life Cycle costing is a method to arrive at such an economic equitable assessment of competing design alternatives.