Whole life costing analysis crucial, says BSRIA

BSRIA has urged buildings services professionals to make sure they understand the roles and complexities of whole life costing.

The research and consultancy body has introduced a guide to whole life costing analysis, providing an economic appraisal of different solutions to given problems, so that better decisions can be made.

The guide explains why whole-life costing analysis is important and sets out when it can be used and the benefits to clients and design teams.

And BSRIA has warned clients, contractors, consultants and product manufacturers they must understand the long-term economic implications of their decisions.

The Whole Life Costings Analysis guide is broken into five sequential colour-coded steps to help design teams adopt the principles easily and quickly. A worked example explains what happens at each step, including defining the scenario, collecting the whole-life cost data, calculating the whole-life costs, finetuning the assumptions and interpreting the results.