EVALUATION OF A BUILDING LIFE CYCLE COST (LCC) CRITERIA IN EGYPT USING THE ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS (AHP)

Abstract

Recently, life cycle cost (LCC) has gained a wide acceptance in the field of industrial building construction, where it is categorized under economic sustainability in the overall sustainability of buildings. Hence, it is necessary to think about the categories and criteria that affect the building’s cost over its lifespan. In this study, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), a multi-criteria decision-making methodology, is employed to evaluate and weight four categories which are building blocks of the LCC of industrial building construction. The assessment model applies seventeen criteria which are distributed under the following four categories:  initial cost, operating or maintenance cost, environmental impact cost, and the end of life. These are evaluated by thirty-seven civilian experts responding to a pair wise questionnaire. The results are significant as they reflect the viewpoints of the civilian experts and can aid in the development of a building's economic sustainability by illuminating the impact factors of the life cycle cost of buildings. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to handle criteria evaluation of LCC for sustainable building using the AHP multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methodology.