Life cycle costing in construction : current trends and emerging directions

Abstract

The current construction climate in the UK is moving forward with a much greater attention on cost certainty, sustainability and adoption of innovative technologies. The UK Construction Strategy 2025 provides a clear direction towards achieving such goals by 2025. Life Cycle Costing (LCC) is one of successful techniques for identifying the total cost of ownership in construction assets. Even though the technique has 50 years of history, the application and the diffusion of the technique within the construction domain is comparatively limited. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the evolution and current status of LCC within construction context through Bibliometric Analysis of journal publications indexed in Web of Science database (1970-2020). A series of Contents Analyses was performed and visualisation maps were generated via VOSviewer. The findings proved that LCC has been absorbed into construction in late 90’s and there is a continuous rise in the global uptake from 2013 onwards. With limited budgets and growing demand for sustainability, an integrated methodology linking LCC, Life Cycle Assessment and Performance optimisation is apparently the way forward for LCC.