Life cycle cost (LCC) and sustainability. Proposal of an IFC structure to implement LCC during the design stage of buildings

Abstract

The role, the economic relevance and the impacts of the construction sector in the world demand, in today’s society, increasing requirements in terms of sustainability and efficiency. According to ISO 15686, the LCC (Life Cycle Cost) methodology is a useful technique that allows the evaluation of comparative costs during a specific period of time, taking into account all relevant economic factors, both in terms of initial capital costs and future operating costs. However, the integration of this powerful methodology into building design tools is still poor, limiting the ability of projects to optimize the costs of buildings during their life cycle. The emergence of IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) technology in the field of architecture, engineering and construction, helped the exchange of information at the design, construction, operation and maintenance stage of a project to be shared independently of the design tools that currently exist, based on a BIM (Building Information Modeling) model that can contain relevant data related to the project/built asset [25]. According to buildingSMART, IFC are the industry’s core classes (IfcDoor, IfcWindow, IfcBeam, etc.) that form the basis for globally recognized data exchange and interoperability. Therefore, this document presents a structured proposal for LCC to implement at IFC. The proposed structure has been developed based on the ISO 15686 standard, which contains the main costs according to the construction phases. With this proposal, it is expected to encourage the implementation of LCC during the design phase of the project in BIM, to achieve more economically efficient buildings.