LCA & LCC Parameters

LCA & LCC Parameters


What are the Parameters?
The LCA and LCC parameters will ensure that your calculations use correct default values where applicable. The parameters are a set of calculation rules which apply to all designs in a single project.
You can fill in or modify the Parameters to ensure you are using the correct default values. If you are unsure of which settings to use, you can also use the default values, which are based on the location of the project. These values can always be edited later.



Setting up your LCA parameters


1. Service life values

Each material row in your assessment will use a certain service life to calculate its impacts for replacement and disposal (B4-B5 category). Here you can define the default service life that is automatically applied to every material in the calculation. The default value will be ignored if you change the service life manually in the 'Building materials' question form. Read more about service life here.

Technical service life - In the technical service life, it is assumed that the same type of materials has the same service life setting. The technical service life represents how long materials last in good conditions and this service life setting is the recommended default.

Commercial service life - The commercial service life setting should be selected when doing retail or hotel projects, in which the service life of the interior (and other materials) is shorter. E.g flooring and finishes will be replaced more often with this service life setting.

Product-specific service life - With this service life setting the service life values vary per manufacturer and the settings from the EPD will be used. Choose this service life setting for DGNB, E+C- and MPG calculations.
Step 1: Choose your service life setting

2. Transportation distance - default values for materials

Each material row in your assessment will use a certain transportation mode and distance from the building material manufacturer to the building site to calculate its transportation impacts. Here you can define the default transportation distances that are automatically applied to every material in the calculation. The default value will be ignored if you change the input manually in the 'Building materials' question form. 
Step 2: Choose your default transportation values

3. Material manufacturing localisation method

Each material in your assessment has its manufacturing impacts largely defined by the energy profile of its manufacturing country. Here you can select the local compensation factor, which adjusts the impacts of material manufacturing in another country to represent manufacturing in the chosen location. 

The material manufacturing localization method (formerly called Local compensation) solves the lack of local environmental profiles for projects all over the world. It adjusts automatically manufacturing electricity to the local electricity mix so that you can always get more representative results for your projects. It is important to note that this does not change the manufacturing process fuel mix (e.g. from coal or oil to natural gas). The process applies only to electricity as that invariably changes between locations of manufacturing, while the same process fuels may be used in plants making similar products across the globe.

We use a data regionalization methodology according to CEN/TR 15941:2010 to adjust the emissions to match with local manufacturing conditions. If you do not wish to use this, leave empty. It is recommended for BREEAM calculations. If you want to learn more about this, please check the following article: Material manufacturing localisation v2
Step 3: Choose your material manufacturing localisation target

Additional settings for Expert users

Expert license users are able to adjust the end of life modeling, this is currently available is a selected number of certification tools. If your chosen certification tool supports this, select the end of life calculation method, and the end of life recovery method if relevant. 

This additional setting is explained further in the following article: User-adjustable end of life modeling

Setting up your LCC parameters

Select the project country in the first question and click 'Load regional parameters'. This will automatically populate all the fields in the question form with our default country-specific values.
You will be still able to modify every field. You should check as a minimum:
  • Exchange rate (expressed against 1 Euro)
  • Hourly labour rate worker (average hourly labour cost for low skilled worker)
  • Hourly labour rate craftsman (average hourly labour cost for high skilled worker)
In addition, you can adjust the regional material cost index and discount factor and inflation to represent your project data more accurately. Hovering your mouse pointer on top of the question mark behind each section will show you additional information on the input parameter.
  1. Regional material cost index adjusts the non-labor costs according to the factor set to the input field. You can use this parameter to account for the variation of pricing between metropolitan and rural areas.
  2. Set the discount rate of the funding organization of the project. If unknown, you can use the suggested default percentage behind the question mark.
  3. Inflation rate is used to determine the real costs of the project with increase of prices accounted for. Inflation can be set separately from general inflation for energy and water.
  4. With EoL as % of capex parameter you can set the percentage of capital expenditure calculated as the end of life costs for your building project.
 
You can read about the LCC method and data here. 

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