Life Cycle Costing in Public Building Projects in Vietnam

Abstract

ABSTRACT The use of life-cycle costing in construction management is fruitful. There is an abundance of tailored, casespecific methods of LCC being developed for use in different cases or industries. However, in public buildings in Vietnam, due to the unavailability of cost, norm data and official guidance, no case of LCC use has been discovered in practice. The paper proposes an adapted approach for LCC in which life-cycle cost can be calculated as a sum of three major elements: initial construction costs, operation and maintenance costs, and the deconstruction costs. For illustration, the paper introduces a case study in calculating life-cycle cost for the Vietnam Securities Depository Centre, the first public office building being accredited as a green building under LOTUS scheme in the country. Using the same process, life-cycle costs can be calculated for other design alternatives for the building. The results are then compared to support the decision-making process to get the most viable alternative. Though this approach has some shortcomings, practitioners can find it as a step-by-step guidance for LCC; they can also use lessons learned from the case study to deal with the lack of detailed data for conducting an estimation of life-cycle costs for public buildings projects.