Abstract

Life Cycle Costing (LCC) technique, is a useful and effective tool widely used in engineering, manufacturing, and business. It features easy-processing, cost-effectiveness, and directly provides numerical results, all of which can be used in the function of cost control, optimal alternatives selection, asset or products assessment, budget planning, preliminary design, project feasibility study, etc. This research, "Life Cycle Costing for Office Buildings in Canada" has been carried out with emphases on investment, development, assessment and management decision-making at the early stage. The computing model is designed for quick and inexpensive OB property evaluating system. The study of historical and current cost data for predicting future cost is one of the features of the LCC technique. The data is obtained from different data sources gathered by contact with government agencies, local real estate companies, BOMA International; as well as from surveys (questionnaires); e-mail; Internet; telephones and inter-library loans. The research has established a data treatment system and database management system; practiced statistics, financing modeling, data regression, and costs forecasting. The main purpose of an LCC analysis is to provide numerical results, which is an important part in the decision-making process. The research methodology and computing model have been developed in order to measure the total net present value (TNPV). Computer programs entitled ${\bf OFFICE\sb-LCC98}$ and ${\bf OFFICE\sb-DB98}$ has been developed and implemented to assist the LCC study. Lastly, this study is unique from previous works in that it assigns examples for explaining speculative office building development and determination of economic rental rates in real estate (RE) practice. And it applies the LCC technique with traditional RE appraisal methods for OB evaluation, as well as setting up a reference for other commercial RE market LCC applications.