Rethinking whole life cycle cost based design decision-making

Procurement arrangements such as the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and Public Private Partnership (PPP) have been instrumental in focusing stakeholders on the long-term cost implications of design decisions. As a result, Whole life cycle costing (WLCC) is now becoming standard practice in projects of this nature. The implementation of such metrics whilst desirable has been difficult to achieve in particularly complex design environments, hence the need for a methodology, which promotes the logical, and iterative application of the technique has emerged. Furthermore, it could be argued that existing WLCC models are used retrospectively and not as part of an iterative design decision-making process. In response, an innovative approach to WLCC modelling is presented. The originality of the research lies in the combination of a WLCC model with a novel decision support application, to assist in the optimisation of the design process. The integrated model enables the analyst to calculate WLCC results using the decision support element to facilitates the iterative application of the model throughout the entire design process, thus providing a repository of design decision-making information, which can be used on a micro level to inform and optimise the WLCC design, and also on a macro level to inform decisions on a global scale or for other similar projects.