Life Cycle costing in construction Research Papers (original) (raw)

Today built heritage conservation should consider constantly changing needs of users. In particular, recent problems related to the economic crisis and to environmental pollution make issues related to consumption reduction and environmental impact particularly important.
Even if historical buildings have many sustainable features in terms of embodied energy and land consumption, they don’t perfectly meet current standards and impose many restraints from a constructive and typological/functional point of view.
In recent years a new approach to preservation has been derived from the theory of “care of monuments” by Ruskin: a preventive and constant maintenance, interpreted as less destructive and cheaper intervention and management of the continual becoming. Besides a lifecycle approach leads to reconsider management and to rethink the intervention putting in place a balance between positive and negative contributions in the long term.
The LCA mantra “from cradle to grave” is usually applied to new products taking into account all components, from the extraction/production of raw materials to the disposal of constructive elements. Since the main goal of historical buildings' conservation is to shift to infinity their dismissal time, this study aims to lay the foundations for an innovative approach for sustainability assessment of existing buildings that should consider the resources savings and doesn’t set a time limit for the building’s life.
The paper focuses on “minor” built heritage, the most exposed to abandonment and decay.

- by and +1
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- Architecture, Cultural Heritage, Historic Preservation, Sustainable Development

Life cycle costing is basically an estimation of the future costs of assets. In the construction sector, it is used to measure the quantity of whole buildings, systems, or building components and materials costs and observing the happened all the way through the life cycle. In 1973, after the energy crisis with increased awareness of energy, there was a strong interest in the life cycle costing method. However, there exist no systematic analyses on LCC applications in the construction sector. The purpose of this article is to gather most recent developments about LCC and also to discuss LCC uses and potential benefits in the construction sector.

The intervention on Cultural Heritage has evolved from an idea of a post factum restoration, that puts an end to a process of continual becoming, to a preventive and constant maintenance, as a less destructive and cheaper action, actually recovery of a philosophy of intervention on historical buildings that has been part of the discipline of restoration since long ago (“care of monuments” supported by John Ruskin).

- by Valentina Cinieri and +1
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- Architecture, Cultural Heritage, Sustainable Development, Cultural Heritage Conservation

More than 40% of electricity power is consumed in commercial buildings in India. Life cycle cost analysis of energyefficient measures for existing fully air-conditioned buildings have been carried out. These measures include electric ballasts for fluorescent lamps; air-to-air energy recovers and sequence control of multiple identical chillers and variable spaced drives. It has been found that sequence control of multiple identical chillers is the most attractive measure with a payback period of two years. With rapid economic growth and improvement in living standards, there has been tremendous growth in energy consumption in India particularly in commercial buildings. Test over two-thirds of the imported coat and oil products are used for electricity generation. There are four major electricity end users-industrial, commercial, residential and public areas. I.

In this paper, we compared the predictive capabilities of six different machine learning algorithms – linear regression, artificial neural network, random forest, extreme gradient boosting, light gradient boosting, and natural gradient boosting – and demonstrated that a hybrid light gradient boosting and natural gradient boosting model provides the most desirable construction cost estimates in terms of the accuracy metrics,
uncertainty estimates, and training speed. We also present a game theory-based model interpretation technique to evaluate the average marginal contribution of each feature value, across all possible combinations of features, on the model predictions. The comparison between the predicted cost and the actual cost confirms good alignment with 𝑅2 ∼ 0.99, 𝑅𝑀𝑆𝐸 ∼ 0.5, and 𝑀𝐵𝐸 ∼ -0.009. Besides, the proposed hybrid model can provide uncertainty estimates through probabilistic predictions for real-valued outputs. This probabilistic prediction approach produces a holistic probability distribution over the entire outcome space to quantify the uncertainties related to construction cost predictions.

- by Hosam Elhegazy
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- Game Theory, Machine Learning, Value Engineering, Construction Cost

Purpose – Drawing on mainstream arguments in the literature, the paper presents a coherent and holistic view on the causes of cost overruns, and the dynamics between cognitive dispositions, learning and estimation. A cost prediction model has also been developed using data mining for estimating final cost of projects. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – A mixed-method approach was adopted: a qualitative exploration of the causes of cost overrun followed by an empirical development of a final cost model using artificial neural networks. Findings – A conceptual model to distinguish between the often conflated causes of underestimation and cost overruns on large publicly funded projects. The empirical model developed in this paper achieved an average absolute percentage error of 3.67 percent with 87 percent of the model predictions within a range of ±5 percent of the actual final cost. Practical implications – The model developed can be converted to a ...

- by B Simon Smith
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- Civil Engineering, Economics, Data Mining, Infrastructure Planning

One of most relevant playground of the debate concerning
the sustainable refurbishment of cultural heritage is focused on its valorisation. Neither a conservative approach, unavailable for every kind of heritage re-use, neither the opposite, devoted to its intensive economical exploitation, seem to be sustainable in a mid-term perspective. Moving on a recently ended research, the paper aims to stress the topic in a holistic “life cycle oriented” approach.

- by Marco Morandotti
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- Resilience, Life Cycle Costing, Restoration, Environmental Sustainability

In this paper, we compared the predictive capabilities of six different machine learning algorithms – linear regression, artificial neural network, random forest, extreme gradient boosting, light gradient boosting, and natural gradient boosting – and demonstrated that a hybrid light gradient boosting and natural gradient boosting model provides the most desirable construction cost estimates in terms of the accuracy metrics, uncertainty estimates, and training speed. We also present a game theory-based model interpretation technique to evaluate the average marginal contribution of each feature value, across all possible combinations of features, on the model predictions. The comparison between the predicted cost and the actual cost confirms good alignment with 𝑅2 ∼ 0.99, 𝑅𝑀𝑆𝐸 ∼ 0.5, and 𝑀𝐵𝐸 ∼ -0.009. Besides, the proposed hybrid model can provide uncertainty estimates through probabilistic predictions for real-valued outputs. This probabilistic prediction approach produces a holistic...

- by DEBADITYA CHAKRABORTY
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- Engineering, Computer Science, Game Theory, Machine Learning
- by Seyda Emekci
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- Economics, Design Theory, Affordable Housing, Life Cycle costing in construction

Rising housing costs have negative effects on
low-income households. In addition,
inefficient use/consumption of resources
poses a risk to the environment. In the
future, it is necessary to improve the
sustainability and lifetime affordability
performance in the housing to avoid the
unwanted social, economic and
environmental impacts that arise from the
housing. This study aims to propose a
conceptual model based on Life Cycle
Costing (LCC) as a solution to the housing
problem which is one of people’s most basic
needs to meet the sheltering for lower
income groups through the ambiguity of
low-cost housing and affordable housing

- by Seyda Emekci
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- Affordable Housing, Life Cycle costing in construction, Life Cycle, Sustainability
- by Noble Iwu
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- Life Cycle costing in construction

- by Dominic Ahiaga-Dagbui
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- Civil Engineering, Economics, Data Mining, Infrastructure Planning