Life cycle cost awareness among architects: The case of Turkey

Abstract

Building construction industry considers both construction and life-cycle cost (LCC) of a building as an important success factor for projects. In order to achieve the lowest cost of product, the study of LCC enables comparative cost assessments to be made over a specified period of time; taking into account relevant economic factors in terms of both initial costs and future maintenance and operational costs the latter of which are generally ignored in building industry especially at the design stage. For this research, the methods of LCC such as present worth cost approach and equivalance annual cost approach were evaluated. The objectives of this study are (1) to analyse these LCC analysis methods, in order to identify those that are being employed by architects practising in Turkey and (2) define the life-cycle costing awareness among architects working in building industry and architectural offices in Turkey. For this reason, a questionnaire survey was developed and sent to freelance architects. A total of 114 participants took part in this research. Some results appear that many architects expand LCC calculations in the design process that this condition is really important for LCC. Most of architects use LCC when making investment decisions but they do not take maintenance cost into consideration. The lack of significant input-cost data and lack of experience appears to be the most important problem in this respect. Keywords: Life-Cycle-Costing, Methods, Building Construction, Production-Process oriented approaches, Design process, Architects, Turkey.