Abstract
Background
There is a growing awareness that Whole Life Costing (WLC) principles offer benefits in assessing the cost of projects, facilities and equipment before commitments are made. As a management tool they provide for options to be compared and for system cost-effectiveness and value-for-money to be optimised.
Properly understood and applied, WLC principles provide a powerful analytical capability: coupled with logistic support and economic analysis techniques they provide the means by which cost drivers and dependencies can be identified, targeted and more effectively managed.
Current Status
Although individual operators have started to apply WLC principles as part of their own development studies, advancement has been constrained. This is mainly due to different interpretations of WLC methods, techniques and requirements.
