A proposed application of using lcca to measure cost of sustainable design

Economic decisions far outweigh environmental and social decisions by profit-oriented construction industry where decisions are usually made to maximize both long and short-term profits. Beheiry et al. (2006) had clearly stated that market forces are the best tools to advocate sustainability. The success of sustainability implementation depends heavily on the ability to measure and estimate environmental, societal and long-term economic variables, and convert them into benefits and costs. Most industrial practitioners are convinced that sustainability is important but the lack of convincing data and calculations methods hampered the application of sustainability application during the decision-making stage. It is also difficult to convince investors that increasing initial expenditure could benefit them in the long run. Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) is one of the best tools available to assess the benefit and cost of the construction. This paper reviews different LCCA methods that could measure economic, environmental and social costs of sustainable design and proposes future directions for designer's decision-making process and how LCCA could better be used to convince investors.