Developing an artificial neural network model for life cycle costing in buildings

Life-cycle costing is an economic assessment which considers all the significant initial, operating, maintenance and disposal costs of ownership over the economic life of a building. Particularly, the maintenance and operating costs associated with these buildings are diverse and reflect the effect buildings have on their owners, users and the environment. An Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) model is presented to estimate operating and maintenance costs of existing buildings. Historical data were gathered from an Office Block, Penllergaer Business Park. The resulting ANN model reasonably predicted the total cost of the building with favourable training and testing phase outcomes. The study can be used to improve the confidence in life cycle costing (LCC) modelling.