Decision making tool for industrialised building system adoption through integrated life cycle cost analysis

Abstract

Industrialised Building System (IBS) as 2nd revolution that took place in early 20th century has contributed to a great shift in sustainable construction. Extensive steps have been taken by the Malaysian Government to encourage IBS usage in Malaysian construction industry through Construction Industry Transformation Programme (CITP) that established in 2016. In CITP, the government targeted to increase IBS usage in private and public sector. However, the major setback of IBS is the high cost in pre-cast material that may affect the overall project cost. At the same time, the negative perception in the high initial cost of the IBS project may lead to the slow adoption of IBS in Malaysian construction industry. Hence, the life cycle costing (LCC) analysis is used as an alternative for reducing the negative perception in IBS project that would contribute to more efficient decision-making in IBS project adoption. However, the current application of Life Cycle Costing is unable to consider the sustainable elements of IBS in cost distribution, Therefore, this study aims to develop a computerised programme application to integrate LCC and IBS cost factor as a tool for economic viability analysis in decision-making. This study was conducted using four stages questionnaires. First is to identify the IBS cost factors, second is to identify the level of knowledge of LCC among construction players, third is to identify LCC cost distribution factor and fourth to identify association of IBS cost factor and LCC cost components. The analysis of each stage was conducted using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). From the analysis, 5 main components for LCC calculation were evaluated, 17 sub-cost components were also calculated for pre-development cost, 8 sub-cost components for construction cost, 7 sub-components cost for operation cost, 5 sub-cost components for maintenance cost and 4 sub-cost components for disposal cost. It was found that 12 major IBS cost factors that contributed to the IBS project cost. Thus, an architectural framework of IBS-LCC calculator was developed using PHP programming, called COSTIBS. To confirm the accuracy of the factors, User Acceptance Test was applied. The result shows that the COSTIBS is applicable to reduce the negative perception as mentioned above. Thus, it is very helpful to speed up the decision-making process in LCC evaluation in IBS which can enhance the usage of IBS in Malaysian construction industry.