Green Building

Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Cost

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a cradle-to-grave analysis that examines the building along with its materials and components. From their extraction, manufacture and transport, to their use, reuse, recycling and assumed disposal, the process of life cycle assessment minimizes the negative impacts on people and the environment. LCA is essential to sustainable design! Life Cycle Cost (LCC) analysis assesses the total cost of ownership, taking into account all costs related to design and construction, ownership, operations and the eventual disposal of a building and its parts. By definition, sustainable design requires an analysis of a building over its entire life and life cycle cost analysis identifies which high performance building systems will save money over the life of the building. For example: Product A may cost less and have a life expectancy of 5 years whereas Product B may cost a little more but have a life expectancy of 15 years, making Product B a better choice due to it having a better life cycle cost. Life Cycle Costs include: Initial project design and construction costs - cradle Building operating costs Building maintenance, repair and replacement costs Building salvage value at the end its life - grave Value Engineering (VE ), when considering sustainability, can be defined as a ratio of function to cost, with the goal of improving performance, quality and life cycle cost. Conventionally however, value engineering is used as a cost cutting exercise, often late in the process when costs need to be cut from the budget, for whatever reason. When components are VEd out of the project late, the project and the owner suffer a consequence. Value engineering tends to generate project cuts, which successfully lessen the construction costs, but usually lessen the true value. However, when using an integrated design process, considering value engineering with the life cycle cost of a building will reflect the efficiency of a building long after it is built and occupied.

The Integrated Design Approach

Any design process should begin by establishing parameters that define the goals of a project. These parameters are then transformed into rough visual representations, referred to as schematic designs. Schematic designs then become the theme that is used as the base for developing the final design/engineering that is eventually incorporated into the construction documents. Architects, engineers, contractors and other stake holders traditionally work separately of each other, with minimal coordination and communication between the team members. This type of segregated design and limited communication restricts integration and subsequent synergistic opportunities, often leading to under or over designed systems. In an integrated design approach, all stakeholders are brought into the project at the onset to discuss the project goals and requirements. At several checkpoints during the design process, reviews are conducted to verify that the owners requirements and goals are being met. Integrated design allows the stakeholders and design team to coordinate the design process so that each member is aware of all decisions made. This is critical as most decisions made relative to one discipline will have an affect on other disciplines. For instance, if the owner decides to

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