The purpose of this paper is to investigate the current level of awareness, usage and advocated benefits of economic performance measures of life cycle costing (LCC) in sustainable commercial office buildings.
Questionnaire survey to 120 construction professionals was used to gauge the current level of awareness, usage and advocated benefits of economic performance measures in LCC.
The key findings of the statistical analysis indicated that there is a low awareness and usage of economic performance measures, and revealing the entire value of capital outflow alternatives was the most advocated benefit of its application.
Although the data used in this paper were from professionally qualified members of either the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) and the British Institute for Facilities Management (BIFM), the research is limited in some ways in that it does not cover all the professionals in the construction industry. Nevertheless, all the professionals who responded to the questionnaire have up-to-date level of awareness of economic performance measures in LCC.
The use of economic performance measures helps to make available the information required for building performance. Therefore, economic performance methods in LCC are useful devices for users to appraise and distribute recognisable values from initial costs, operating and maintenance costs to clients in the life cycle of an asset.
Value for money for construction products and its facilities should not be viewed only in terms of costs to design and construction. Rather, it is vital for corporate occupants and society in general to consider other key variables such as operations, maintenance, renovation, replacement and end-of-life costs.
This study fills the gap in the existing knowledge by addressing concerns over performance measurement to improve the confidence in LCC for sustainable commercial office buildings.
