An-Najah Staff

Green buildings and sustainable construction operate as a subset of sustainable development. A growing body of literature suggests that green buildings outperform conventional (non-green) buildings in all performance areas, particularly in term of economic benefits which are typically assessed using life cycle costing as an economic appraisal technique. However, reports and studies show a performance gap once buildings are occupied. Therefore, merely relying on performance simulation and modeled design is not satisfactory to convince building owners and real estate investors that green building is a rational economic decision and a cost effective long-term strategy. While unprecedented consensus about several life cycle benefits of green building exists, no standard methods were proposed or developed to monitor and control the actual life cycle cost of green buildings. This paper addresses the issue of green buildings actual life cycle cost performance and suggests a conceptual framework to extend the functionality of Earned Value Management (EVM) Approach to be applied throughout building operating phase. Comparative analysis has been conducted to investigate validity of Earned Value Management (EVM) parameters in building operating phase, as well as to investigate the cost patterns and characteristics in both building construction and operating phase. The results suggest that it is possible to extend the functionality of the Earned Value Management (EVM) technique to be applied during building operating phase, but different criteria and procedures are required to calculate the cost variances and cost performance indices due to significant dissimilarities in the cost control parameters.