Automated Life-Cycle Costing (CML)

This guide helps you to successfully complete your calculations for a Life Cycle Costing analysis in One Click LCA with the automated LCC tool.

One Click LCA “Life-cycle cost, automated” tool is designed in line with EN 16627 and ISO 15686-5 and standards. The results will be reported based on cost categories mandatory in the EN standard. As a minimum, the categories that must be reported are construction, operation, maintenance, and end-of-life costs. Other versions of the life-cycle costing tool (e.g. according to PD in the UK, or NS3453 in Norway) are compliant with their mandatory standards

How to complete your assessment, step-by-step

1. Set your LCC study parameters

   
   
   • The LCC parameters will open automatically when you first activate the project. Later you can click ‘Parameters’ from the project main page’s Design ribbon. The LCC parameters are location specific and enable the automation of your LCC calculations.

 

• Firstly, set cost regionalization by selecting the country and click ‘Load regional cost parameters’.

• If you have a license with with automatic costing, the cost calculation method is already defined. If you wish you use manual costing you can select this, or simply overwrite the values on the building materials query.

Edit the other generated parameters as necessary. You should check as a minimum:

• Exchange rate (expressed against 1 Euro)
• Hourly labour rate worker (average hourly labour cost for low skilled worker)
• Hourly labour rate craftsman (average hourly labour cost for high skilled worker)

The regional material cost index can be changed as well, however this is populated with default values already based on the urbanization of your location.

Discount factors and inflation rates, can be edited if you know these values to be different for your project. If not, use default values.

Then, set your LCC study calculation period as specified by the client/dependent on the purpose of the study in the ‘Calculation period’ input form.

Please note: If the calculations for your LCA are complete, your LCC results will be displayed after setting the calculation period. However, you should adjust the LCC based on your project cost specific info.

2. Pre-construction stage costs (A0) are included in the ‘Other capital costs’ question form

• Enter costs like land purchase, permits and licenses, planning, design and supervision costs, soil studies and comparable on the specific rows, if you wish to include these elements to the scope of your study. If you have cost elements, not listed in the dropdown menu, use ‘Other costs’ and specify the cost element in the comment row.

3. The construction material costs (A1-A5) are included in the ‘Building materials’ (or ‘Other capital costs’) input form

• All your building materials and quantities can be automatically imported (see our import options and guidance for import here) or added manually. If you have already calculated your LCA, the materials are automatically taken from your LCA design question form ‘Building materials’. The software provides you default unit costs based on the type of the material, which you can edit as necessary.
• If you know the lump sum of your material costs, edit the ‘Total cost’. If you have cost data available for whole building element, you can mark the ‘Total cost’ to be 0 for those materials and add the element total cost to the ‘Other capital cost’ question form, under ‘Construction cost’ and mark to the comment field it’s name (e.g. External windows and roof lights).
• Make sure to mark the service life to enable replacement cost calculation.

You can use the comment row to structure your cost elements or mark if they are not included in your cost calculations if you wish.

Please note, when adding materials or editing quantities, units or service life in this question form, the inputs will also change in the LCA tool and vice versa.

4. Including Maintenance, operation and repair (B1-B3) costs

• Such operational costs are included in the ‘Other operating cost’ input form. Other operational costs (cleaning, minor repair, etc.) are to be added to ‘Other operating cost’ input form.
• The inputs are calculated based on the building area. If you know the lump sum of the cost element, set the quantity as 1 and insert ‘Total cost’.

5. Replacement/refurbishment costs (B4-B5)

• Replacement/refurbishment costs (B4-B5) will be calculated based on the building materials and their workload/investment costs that are discounted to net present value and service life of those materials.
• Building materials service life will be defined based on service life values as selected for the LCA calculations. They can be adjusted as necessary.

6. Operational energy and water (B6 and B7)

• Operational costs will be calculated based on operational energy and water consumption.
• Like building materials, the energy and water consumption values are taken from your LCA calculations (and vice versa) or entered separately (if no LCA integration is used).
• The software will provide you default unit cost, which you can adjust as necessary. If you know the annual costs for water and energy consumption, change the Total cost.

7. Your end-of-life costs (C1-C4) will be calculated based on your capital costs (A0-A5) automatically using share of total capital costs

• The % share can be edited in the calculation parameters.

8. Your LCC is now ready, you can analyze your results on the Results page

• The results can be downloaded when clicking on ‘More actions’ (upper right corner on Results page) and ‘Life-cycle cost report’.

9. Download our LCC report template

• If you need to present the results to client, you are welcome to use our LCC reporting template: One Click LCA report template for LCC (find attachment at the bottom of the page).

How to interpret your results

The discount factor and inflation are based on the settings which can be set and changed in the 'LCC Parameters' section.

The results page is split into two different columns. The 'Life-cycle cost, discounted with inflation' and the 'LCC, nominal (undiscounted, includes inflation)'. To be able to compare costs during a building’s lifetime, they need to be considered time equivalent. To do this, the calculation converts them to present values (or ‘discounted’ as shown in your results) by discounting them to a common point in time. This way we can see both the building’s total costs at today’s value of the currency, and with the expected value of currency changing throughout the lifetime of the building (or ‘undiscounted’ in your results).

The discount rate used, which can be adjusted in your LCC parameters, reflects the opportunity cost of money over time, meaning that an investor wants to achieve a return at least equal to other possible investment opportunities, hence the discount rate typically represents the investor’s minimum acceptable rate of return.

Both result categories take into account take same calculation parameters (the same set inflation rates).

In our example below, it is shown with the set parameters from the 'United Kingdom' profile. The calculation period is set to 60 years, which calculates with the given parameters a discounted life cycle cost of 1 013 022. The undiscounted life cycle cost results in 2 370 795, due to the fact that it takes into the change in the currency value.

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