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This paper aims at contributing to the dissemination of Life Cycle Cost as a management tool to face current construction market challenges in terms of economic performance. Recent developments, methodology, advantages, weaknesses, and potential benefits of performing an LCC analysis are presented and discussed. A simplified case study illustrates detailed economic performance calculations for a hypothetical office building whose results presented in Net Present Value are discussed and complemented with case studies reported in the literature. Operation costs related to electric energy consumption for heating and cooling are commonly the main contributors to the LCC of buildings, followed by maintenance costs, which evidences the need to equate costs and energy efficiency, especially to meet the objectives of a sustainable construction market. LCC plays an important role in minimizing costs throughout building's lifespan when performed in the building design phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The horror pleni that Dorfles identifies with «Too much information, too many images, too many noises» is equivalent to the "Tzunami of information" that, according to Floridi, has invested the company in the last decade. Hypertrophy of the sign for the first, infosphere and on-life are the terms from which to start working on the second. A fourth revolution in which the expression onlife defines the new perimeter of our daily activities and ICT technologies, among these the IoT, increasingly configure the environment we live in and influence the processes related to maintaining quality in time and to life cycle assessment. It is not a new theme; the approaches brought about by digital transformation have been innovated. Equally worthy of challenge are the new problems and the new complexities related to interoperability and Big Data Analytics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

NHS Trusts in England must adopt appropriate levels of continued investment in routine and backlog maintenance if they are to ensure critical backlog does not accumulate. This paper presents the current state of critical backlog maintenance within the National Health Service (NHS) in England through the statistical analyses of 115 Acute NHS Trusts. It aims to find empirical support for a causal relationship between building portfolio age and year-on-year increases in critical backlog. It makes recommendations for the use of building portfolio age in strategic asset management. The current trend across this sample of NHS Trusts may be typical of the whole NHS built asset portfolio and suggests that most Trusts need to invest between 0.5 and 1.5 per cent of income (depending upon current critical backlog levels and Trust age profile) to simply maintain critical backlog levels. More robust analytics for building age, condition and risk-adjusted backlog maintenance are required.

NHS Trusts in England must adopt appropriate levels of continued investment in routine and backlog maintenance if they are to ensure critical backlog does not accumulate. This paper presents the current state of critical backlog maintenance within the National Health Service (NHS) in England through the statistical analyses of 115 Acute NHS Trusts. It aims to find empirical support for a causal relationship between building portfolio age and year-on-year increases in critical backlog. It makes recommendations for the use of building portfolio age in strategic asset management. The current trend across this sample of NHS Trusts may be typical of the whole NHS built asset portfolio and suggests that most Trusts need to invest between 0.5 and 1.5 per cent of income (depending upon current critical backlog levels and Trust age profile) to simply maintain critical backlog levels. More robust analytics for building age, condition and risk-adjusted backlog maintenance are required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wood is a renewable resource and a promising construction material for the growing bio-based economy. Efficiently utilising wood in the built environment requires a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics regarding its usability. Durability is an essential property to consider, as various types of exposure create conditions for the deterioration of wood through biotic and abiotic agents. Biodegradable materials introduce increased complexity to construction and design processes, as material decomposition during a structure's lifetime presents a physical risk to human health and safety and costs related to repairs and maintenance. Construction professionals are thus tasked with utilising wooden elements to accentuate the material's beneficial properties while reducing the risk of in-service decomposition. In this paper, only the cause and effect of fungal induced decay on the service life of wooden buildings and other wood-based construction assets are reviewed. The service life of wood components can thus be extended if suitable growing conditions are controlled. Multiple existing modelling approaches are described throughout the text, with special attention given to the two most comprehensive ones; TimberLife and the WoodExter. In choosing an appropriate model for a specific application, the authors recommend evaluating the model's regional specificity, complexity, practicality, longevity and adaptability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wood is an advantageous building material in many respects, but it is biodegradable and therefore requires protection when used in highly hazardous applications. This Special Issue on 'Wood Protection and Preservation' comprises 19 papers representing a wide range of aspects related to the field and gives timely examples of research activities that can be observed around the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The service life of exposed wooden structures depends on many endogenous and exogenous factors with moisture being key for fungal degradation. Climate parameters are therefore important input variables for modelling fungal decay in wood. In recent years, different approaches aimed at modelling climate-induced dosage on the material climate (i.e., exposure models) and the effect of the latter on fungal decay (i.e., decay models). Based on maps of Europe, North America or Australia, the decay hazard can be assigned to zones and used for estimating the relative decay potential of an arbitrary location. However, especially in topographically divergent regions, the climate-induced decay hazard can vary strongly within a small area. Within this study, decay hazards were quantified and mapped for a mountainous region where topography-induced differences in local climate and corresponding exposure dosage can be expected. The area under investigation was Switzerland. In addition to the Scheffer Climate Index (SCI), two exposure models were combined with two decay models and used to quantify the relative moisture- and temperature-induced exposure dose at 75 different weather stations in Switzerland and adjacent regions. The exposure was expressed as relative dosage with Uppsala (Sweden) as a reference location. Relative dose values were calculated for locations between weather stations using an 'inverse distance weighted (IDW)' interpolation and displayed in maps for the entire country. A more detailed analysis was undertaken for the Lötschental area, which is the largest valley on the northern side of the Rhône valley in the canton of Valais. The relative dose differed strongly within small areas and altitude was well correlated with the average annual temperature and the resulting relative dose. It became evident that small-scale mapping with high resolution is needed to fully reflect the impact of topography and other local conditions on the moisture- and temperature-induced decay risk in wooden components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]