Infrastructure Life Cycle Costing

This guide helps you to successfully complete your calculations for an infrastructure life cycle costing analysis in One Click LCA with the automated LCC tool.

The 'Life-cycle cost infrastructure' tool is based on EN 17472. The results will be reported based on cost categories mandatory in the EN standard. In addition to the used queries in LCA infrastructure tools, this tool has a 'pre-construction work' query which has been designed to be able to calculate A0 cost. In addition to the LCA infrastructure queries, it also includes 'capital cost' and 'operating cost' queries which are used also in building LCC tools.

Set your LCC study parameters

The LCC parameters will open automatically when you first activate the project and you can click ‘Parameters’ from the project main page’s Design ribbon to edit these at any time. The LCC parameters are location-specific and enable the automation of your LCC calculations.

 

First, set cost regionalization by selecting the country and clicking ‘Load regional cost parameters’.

If you have a license 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 in the relevant calculation queries.

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 a low-skilled worker)
• Hourly labour rate craftsman (average hourly labour cost for a highly 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's cost-specific info.

Pre-construction stage costs

Pre-construction stage costs (A0) are input to the 'Pre-Construction Work' query or in the ‘Other capital costs’ query

Enter costs related to energy, water and waste associated with pre-construction to the 'Pre-Construction Work' query. Other costs such as land purchase, permits and licenses, planning, design and supervision costs, soil studies, connection fees etc. can be added as specific rows in the 'Other capital costs' query and assigned the 'Capital Cost Stage' of 'Pre-Construction Work' 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.

Earthworks and mass hauling

Earthworks and mass hauling costs are included in the ‘Earthworks and mass hauling costs’ query

All of your earthworks and mass hauling 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 same data is automatically included from your LCA design query ‘Earthworks and mass hauling’. The software provides you with default unit costs based on the type of resource used, which you can edit as necessary.

If you know the lump sum cost for your row, edit the ‘Total cost’.

Construction materials

The construction material costs (A1-A5) are included in the ‘Construction materials’ (or ‘Other capital costs’) query

Like the earthworks and mass hauling query, these inputs can be imported or added manually and are automatically carried across from your LCA design calculation. The software provides you with default unit costs based on the type of 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 the whole 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 its 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.

Maintenance, operation and repair

Such B1-B3 operational costs can be included in the ‘Other operating cost’ input form for annually recurring costs. These can also be included in the construction materials query and assigned based on the 'Impact stage' selected. This way the impacts are calculated every set number of years based on the service life of the row.

Replacement/refurbishment costs

Replacement/refurbishment costs (B4-B5) will be calculated based on the construction materials and their workload/investment costs that are discounted to net present value and service life of those materials.

The service life of the construction materials will be defined based on service life values as selected for the LCA calculations. They can be adjusted as necessary.

Operational energy and water

Operational costs (B6-B7) will be calculated based on operational energy and water consumption. Like construction 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.

End-of-life costs

Your end-of-life costs (C1-C4) will be calculated based on your capital costs (A0-A5) automatically using a share of total capital costs. The % share can be edited in the calculation parameters as shown below:

Results

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

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 an asset’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 total costs at today’s value of the currency and the expected value of currency changing throughout the lifetime of the asset (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).