Life cycle in the built environment
In terms of the built environment, ‘life cycle’ refers to a product, building or service over the course of its whole life. For example, relation to a building, this would include its design, construction, operation, and disposal. Considering the life full cycle of a building can help ensure that all aspects are properly considered, rather than just the cost of construction.
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a method for evaluating the environmental load of processes and products during their life cycle. An LCA attempts to identify the environmental effects during all stages of its life and produces a figure (or several figures) that represent the total environmental load. In a full LCA, the energy and materials used, along with waste and pollutants produced as a consequence of a product or activity are quantified.
The term ‘cradle-to-grave’ is an approach for defining the boundaries of an embodied energy assessment which involves measuring or estimating the total energy consumed through the entire life cycle of a building or product.
In terms of life cycle costs, whole-life costs consider all those that are associated with the life of a building, from inception to construction, occupation and operation and disposal.
NB Government Functional Standard, GovS 002: Project delivery; portfolio, programme and project management, Version: 2.0, published on 15 July 2021 by HM Government, states: ‘The life cycle provides a phased structure for governing the work and underpinning the delivery plan, from start to finish. Life cycles can be applied to a portfolio, service, product, system, programme or project.’
[edit] Related articles on Designing Buildings
- Challenging the current approach to end of life of buildings using a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach.
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- Cradle-to-grave.
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- Design for Deconstruction.
- Design life.
- ECA welcomes the Value Toolkit for the construction industry.
- End of life potential.
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- Integrated Material Profile and Costing Tool.
- Life cycle assessment.
- Life cycle inventory.
- Life-cycle plan.
- The Value Toolkit.
- Utilising life cycle costing and life cycle assessment.
- Whole life costs.
- Whole life solution
- Why we need to grasp the whole life cycle.
- Wood, embodied carbon and operational carbon.
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