LIFE CYCLE COST ANALYSIS OF BUILDING ENVELOPE IN COMPOSITE CLIMATE

DISSERTATION – II
Department of Building Engineering and Management
School of Planning and Architecture New Delhi

- Vashuka Ghritalahare
SPA/NS/BEM/860

INTRODUCTION
Energy is consistently reported as an essential resource for modern societies. The population
growth and lifestyle changes have been and still are increasing the energy demand and there
have been various economic (e.g., energy crisis in the 1970’s), environmental (e.g., pollution
from fossil fuels use) and social (e.g., armed conflicts over energy sources control/access)
impacts.
The energy consumed globally in buildings makes up the largest portion, accounting for 40%
of the total energy consumed worldwide (Gruber et al., 2015). This also corresponds to 38%
of the greenhouse gas emissions, reflecting the dimension of the issue both from an economic
and environmental perspectives. Considering that climate changes are forecasted to increase
extreme weather events, namely cold fronts and heat waves, the need for a building envelope
will tend to increase in the future in order to minimise the use of mechanical means for
maintaining comfort level inside the building.
This research work analyses the life cycle cost of building envelope in composite climate and
develop a decision template to select the best suitable system based on the financial aspect.
Life cycle cost is cautiously described by the building and construction assets standard
ISO15686 as: “a technique which enables comparative cost assessments to be made over a
specified period of time, taking into account all relevant economic factors both in terms of
initial costs and future operational costs”.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Handbook 135, 1996 edition,
defines Life Cycle Cost (LCC) as “the total discounted dollar cost of owning, operating,
maintaining, and disposing of a building or a building system” over a period of time. Life
Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) is an economic evaluation technique that determines the total
cost of owning and operating a facility over period of time.
Life cycle costing, as the name suggests, is the total cost of a project during its lifetime. It
includes initial investment cost, operational cost, maintenance & repair cost, replacement cost
and residual value.
1.1 RESEARCH GAP : There are researches on life cycle cost analysis of building
components. However, these researches only focussed on the building envelopes for a
specific building typology i.e. office buildings.
This study will be focussing on most suitable and economical building envelope in composite
climate.

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 Seminar – 1

Heating and ventilation systems consume almost 40% of total energy consumed by a building
which is a major part of the capital cost and O&M cost of any project. Improvement upon it,
can make a drastic reduction in energy cost. Therefore, it is critical to choose the best
possible option available of building envelope to minimise the use of these systems.
Studies indicate that many times, maintenance and repair cost is much higher than the initial
cost. Thus, decisions made on initial cost consideration are many times misleading. This
strengthens the need for taking into account all the incurred costs on any asset throughout its
life span.

1.3 AIM : The research aims to analyse the life cycle cost of building envelope in composite
climate and develop a decision template to select the best suitable system based on the
financial aspect.

1.4 OBJECTIVES :
1. To identify various types of building envelope used in composite climate.
2. To prepare a template for the calculation of LCC of building envelopes considering
the estimated service life of each identified type.
3. To find the LCC of building envelopes used in composite climate using above
template.
4. To create a LCC calculation tool for the selection of best suitable building envelope
in composite climate.

1.5 SCOPE : The study is limited to analysing building envelope and will be focussed on
composite climate only.

1.6 OUTCOME : The outcome will be to create a LCC calculation tool for the selection of
best suitable building envelope in composite climate.

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