Life Cycle Cost (LCC) and Sustainability - Proposal of an IFC Structure to Implement LCC During the Design Stage of Buildings

Oct 28, 2026

The construction sector’s economic significance and sustainability impacts drive growing demands for efficiency and responsible decision-making. In line with ISO 15686, Life Cycle Cost (LCC) supports comparative evaluation of initial capital and future operating costs, yet its integration into building design tools remains limited, restricting life-cycle cost optimization. This work proposes an IFC-based structure to embed LCC into BIM authoring, aiming to enable more economically efficient buildings through interoperable cost data exchange.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages23

Reading Time58 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Life Cycle Cost (LCC) Methodology

LCC Definition

LCC and LCA

Life Cycle Cost (LCC) and Sustainability. Proposal of an IFC Structure to Implement LCC During the Design Stage of Buildings Ignacio Bernardino-Galeana 1(B) , Carmen Llatas 1 , María Victoria Montes 1 , Bernardette Soust-Verdaguer 1 , Jacinto Canivell2 , and Pedro Meda2 1 University of Seville, 41012 Seville, Spain [ignbergal@alum.es.us](ignbergal@alum.es.us) 2 University of Porto, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal Abstract. The role, the economic relevance and the impacts of the construction sector in the world demand, in today’s society, increasing requirements in terms of sustainability and efﬁciency. According to ISO 15686, the LCC (Life Cycle Cost) methodology is a useful technique that allows the evaluation of comparative costs during a speciﬁc period of time, taking into account all relevant economic factors, both in terms of initial capital costs and future operating costs. However, the integration of this powerful methodology into building design tools is still poor, limiting the ability of projects to optimize the costs of buildings during their life cycle. The emergence of IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) technology in the ﬁeld of architecture, engineering and construction, helped the exchange of information at the design, construction, operation and maintenance stage of a project to be shared independently of the design tools that currently exist, based on a BIM (Building Information Modeling) model that can contain relevant data related to the project/built asset [25] . According to buildingSMART, IFC are the industry’score classes (IfcDoor, IfcWindow, IfcBeam, etc.) that form the basis for globally recognized data exchange and interoperability. Therefore, this document presents a structured proposal for LCC to implement at IFC. The proposed structure has been developed based on the ISO 15686 standard, which contains the main costs according to the construction phases. With this proposal, it is expected to encourage the implementation of LCC during the design phase of the project in BIM, to achieve more economically efﬁcient buildings. Keywords: Life Cycle Cost (LCC) · IFC · Building data structure · ISO 15686 · Cost optimization · Economic building sustainability · Building Information Modeling (BIM) · Building design tools 1 Introduction Making the best decisions before starting a construction project has become a factor in determining the success or failure of such projects because buildings have become larger © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Rotaru (Ed.): CRIT-RE-BUILT 2019, SSGG, pp. 404–426, 2021 . [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61118-7](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61118-7_33)[_](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61118-7_33)[33](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61118-7_33) LCC and Sustainability. Proposal of an IFC Structure 405 and more complex. Particularly in the life cycle of a construction project, the planning and design phases have an important weight (Kaplan and Norton 2005), in these stages important decisions are made such as the outline of a building and the selection of design alternatives. Furthermore, the preliminary estimate in the initial design phase determines not only the viability of the project but also the total cost of the project (Azman, Abdul-Samad and Ismail) . Decision making in the planning, schematic design, ﬁnal design phases affects construction costs as well as costs incurred for the maintenance and dismantling of building structures. Therefore, decisions must be made with the life cycle cost (LCC) in mind. To support decision-making regarding the key elements of a construction project and the selection of design alternatives in the initial design phase of the project, the scope of this study was limited to structuring IFC, including ISO 15686, the LCC methodology in the initial design phase. This study proposes an IFC import and export method from a B

FAQs

Why is LCC important in building design decisions?

Because planning and design choices strongly influence not only construction costs but also maintenance and dismantling costs throughout the building life cycle.

What does ISO 15686 contribute to the LCC methodology?

ISO 15686 defines LCC as a technique for predicting and assessing cost performance and enabling consistent comparisons across alternatives with different cash flows and time frames.

How does the proposal use IFC and BIM to implement LCC?

The document proposes an IFC import/export method from a BIM model, structuring and linking criteria so that LCC data conforming to ISO 15686 can be included during the design stage.

Oct 28, 2026

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