deliverable 5.3: recommendations for format of a life ...the overall aim of wp5 is to create a life...

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MAINLINE

MAINtenance, renewaL and Improvement of rail transport iNfrastructure to reduce Economic and environmental impacts

Collaborative project (Small or medium-scale focused research project)

Theme SST.2011.5.2-6.: Cost-effective improvement of rail transport infrastructure

Deliverable 5.3: Recommendations for Format of a

Life Cycle Assessment Tool (LCAT)

Grant Agreement number: 285121 SST.2011.5.2-6.

Start date of project: 1 October 2011 Duration: 36 months

Lead beneficiary of this deliverable: University of Surrey

Due date of deliverable: 30/06/2012 Actual submission date: 14/03/2013

Release: Final version

Project co-funded by the European Commission within the 7th Framework Programme

Dissemination Level

PU Public Report, Appendixes A and B

PP Restricted to other programme participants (including the Commission Services)

RE Restricted to a group specified by the consortium (including the Commission Services)

CO Confidential, only for members of the consortium (including the Commission Services)

D5.3 Recommendations for LCAT Format MAINLINE SST.2011.5.2-6.

ML-D5.3-F-RECOMMENDATIONS_FOR_FORMAT_OF_A_LCAT-PU.DOCX 14/03/2013

PU Copyright © MAINLINE Consortium

Table of Contents

LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................................................... 3

LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................................................... 3

GLOSSARY .................................................................................................................................................... 4

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ......................................................................................................................... 5

1.1 SCOPE ................................................................................................................................................ 5 1.2 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDED AREAS FOR FURTHER WORK ........................................................... 5

2. GENERAL REMARKS ................................................................................................................................ 9

3. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................................................... 12

4. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 13

4.1 BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION .............................................................................................................. 13 4.2 SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES ......................................................................................................................... 13

5. COMMON PARAMETERS AND GAPS BETWEEN WHOLE LIFE ASSET MANAGEMENT AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT TOOLS ........................................................................................................... 15

5.1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 15 5.2 INPUTS FROM D5.2 AND D5.4 ................................................................................................................. 15 5.3 IDENTIFICATION OF TYPICAL LCC AND LCA PARAMETERS FROM D5.2 AND D5.4 AND GAP ANALYSIS ........... 16 5.4 IDENTIFICATION OF BASIC METHODOLOGY PROCESSES FOR LCC AND LCA AND GAP ANALYSIS ................... 19 5.5 SUMMARY OF THE GAP ANALYSIS ............................................................................................................. 22 5.6 REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................................... 22

6. RECOMMENDATION FOR RELEVANT PARAMETERS FOR LCAT .................................................... 23

6.1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 23 6.2 DETERMINATION OF LCAT PERFORMANCE CRITERIA ................................................................................ 23

6.2.1 IM information concerning existing LCC and LCA tools ............................................................... 23 6.2.2 Recommendations for LCAT ......................................................................................................... 24 6.2.3 Integration of LCC and LCA analyses into LCAT .......................................................................... 25 6.2.4 The consultants’ views on LCAT performance criteria.................................................................. 26

6.3 RECOMMENDATIONS OF MOST RELEVANT PARAMETERS FOR LCAT AND IDENTIFICATION OF POTENTIAL GAPS28

7. RECOMMENDATION FOR POTENTIAL WHOLE LIFE ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT METHODOLOGY FRAMEWORK FOR LCAT ................................................................... 30

7.1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 30 7.2 POTENTIAL METHODOLOGY FRAMEWORK OPTIONS FOR WHOLE LIFE ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL

ASSESSMENT TOOL ....................................................................................................................................... 30 7.3 RECOMMENDATION OF METHODOLOGY FRAMEWORK FOR LCAT ............................................................... 46 7.4 REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................................... 48

8. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR LCAT FORMAT ......................................................................................... 49

APPENDIX A – ASSESSMENT OF LCC METHODOLOGIES FOR IDENTIFICATION OF BASIC LCC METHODOLOGY PROCESSES .................................................................................................................. 52

APPENDIX B – BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE EN ISO 14040 LCA METHODOLOGY FRAMEWORK .. 56




List of figures

FIGURE 1 GENERAL ORGANISATION OF THE PROJECT .................................................................................... 10

FIGURE 2 METHODOLOGY OF CARRYING OUT TASK 5.3 .................................................................................. 14

FIGURE 3 TWO PARTS OF THE CONDUCTED GAP ANALYSIS STUDY .................................................................. 15

FIGURE 4 EN ISO 14040 LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK ............................................................... 19

FIGURE 5 OPTION 1: SEPARATE LCC AND LCA ANALYSES FLOW-CHART ....................................................... 31

FIGURE 6 AN EXAMPLE OF THE IN/OUT FRAME CONCEPT – ADAPTED FROM INNOTRACK ............................. 33

FIGURE 7 COST ELEMENT CONCEPT WITH THREE DIMENSIONAL MATRIX BASED ON BS EN 60300-3-3 ............ 34

FIGURE 8 ENVIRONMENTAL ELEMENT CONCEPT - ADAPTED FROM EN 60300-3-3 ........................................... 35

FIGURE 9 EXAMPLES OF LCC AND LCA MODELS LINKED BETWEEN PRODUCT (ASSET SYSTEM), LCC COSTS AND

LCA ENVIRONMENTAL EMISSIONS. ................................................................................................................ 35

FIGURE 10 EXAMPLE OF NATA APPRAISAL SUMMARY TABLE AN ILLUSTRATED SCHEME ................................ 38

FIGURE 11 OPTION 2 CONVERSION LCA RESULTS INTO ENVIRONMENTAL COST FOR LCC EVALUATION FLOW

CHART ......................................................................................................................................................... 39

FIGURE 12 - U.K NON-TRADED CARBON COST FACTORS IN GBP/TONNE CO2E .............................................. 40

FIGURE 13 - IMPACT'S RECOMMENDED COST FACTORS IN EURO/TONNE CO2 ............................................... 41

FIGURE 14 – OPTION 3 CONVERSION OF LCC AND LCA RESULTS INTO AN ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL

SCORE FLOW CHART ..................................................................................................................................... 43

FIGURE 15 – OPTION 4 INTERVENTIONS WITH PRE-DETERMINED ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS AND PERFORMANCE

SCORES FLOW CHART ................................................................................................................................... 45

FIGURE B1 - EN ISO 14040 LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK ............................................................ 56

FIGURE B2 - ISO 14044 LIFE CYCLE IMPACT ASSESSMENT CONCEPT ........................................................... 57

List of tables

TABLE 1 GAP ANALYSIS FOR IDENTIFIED LCC AND LCA PARAMETERS ........................................................... 18

TABLE 2 GAP ANALYSIS FOR LCC AND LCA METHODOLOGY PROCESSES ..................................................... 21

TABLE 3 SUMMARY OF THE GAP ANALYSIS FOR LCC AND LCA..................................................................... 22

TABLE 4 MOST RELEVANT LCC AND LCA PARAMETERS WITH GAPS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ........................ 29

TABLE 5 MOST RELEVANT LCAT PARAMETERS WITH GAPS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ..................................... 51




Glossary

Abbreviation / acronym Description

CBS Cost Breakdown Structure

DoW Description of Work

IM Infrastructure Manager

LCC Life Cycle Cost

LCCA Life Cycle Cost Analysis

LCA Life Cycle Assessment

LCAT Life Cycle Assessment Tool

LCI Life Cycle Inventory

MCDA Multi-criteria decision analysis

NATA AST New Approach To Appraisal – Appraisal Summary Table

NPV Net Present Value

PBS Product Breakdown Structure

R & D Research and Development

WP Work Package




1. Executive summary

1.1 Scope

Growth in demand for rail transportation across Europe is predicted to continue. Much of this growth will have to be accommodated on existing track and infrastructure. This demand will increase both the rate of deterioration of these elderly assets and the need for shorter line closures for maintenance or renewal interventions. Interventions on elderly infrastructure will also need to take account of the need for lower economic and environmental impacts. This presents the need for a tool to be developed which can inform decision makers about the economic and environmental consequences of different intervention options being considered.

The overall aim of WP5 is to create a Life Cycle Assessment Tool (LCAT) that can compare different maintenance and replacement strategies for track and infrastructure based on a life cycle evaluation. The life cycle evaluation shall quantify direct economic costs, availability costs (e.g. delay costs, user cost/benefit from upgrade etc.) and environmental impact costs. Moreover, the tool should also take into account target user safety levels in the optimization process.

The objective of Task 5.3 is to carry out a gap analysis by analysing data inputs from D5.1 "Assessment of asset management tools" and D5.2 "Assessment of environmental performance tools and methods" to determine the common parameters and gaps in currently available asset management and environmental impact tools. Task 5.4 has undertaken a comprehensive review on LCC tools to identify the key parameters that need to be considered during the development of the LCAT. Because of that and due to changes in the Task 5.1 work plan, input from Task 5.4 has been used in the gap analysis instead of input from Task 5.1.

The main forms of whole life asset management and environmental impact tools studied in this report are life cycle costing (LCC) and life cycle assessment (LCA), respectively. In addition, the report concentrates on the carbon emission and waste, the two most applicable environmental categories that are recommended by the D5.2.

The current D5.3 report contains a gap analysis of the outputs from D5.2 and D5.4. The recommendations from the analysis shall be used to formulate the LCAT, a whole life economic and environmental assessment tool. A methodology framework is an important aspect for formulating the LCAT format. Therefore, as part of the recommendations for the format, the report also contains study of 4 options of combinations of whole life economic and environmental methodology frameworks and provides recommendations of the most appropriate methodology to be taken forward to Task 5.4 for further development. In addition, the task also conducted survey with 6 IMs around Europe. The report provides an overview of the recommendations for the parameters to be included in the LCAT from these IMs perspective.

1.2 Conclusions and recommended areas for further work

The report recommends Option 2 ‘Conversion of LCA results into environmental cost for LCC evaluation’ as the most appropriate whole life economic and environmental assessment methodology framework of LCAT for evaluating carbon emission and waste. It is the option that fulfilled the criteria from MAINLINE DOW and the most preferred by the IMs, for which the economic and environmental assessment results are quantified and presented in monetary units. If other environmental impacts are to be included in the LCAT and are difficult to be valued in




terms of monetary costs, then conversion of environmental impacts (for LCA results) to performance scores using multi-criteria analysis is recommended as the alternative method.

In addition, the IMs survey concluded that one complete LCAT is highly preferred by majority of the IMs.

The gap analysis study revealed, at general level, the LCC and LCA process of carrying out analyses is quite similar. However, there are significant differences in terms of their model concepts and evaluation process involved. Moreover, there are principles and parameters in the LCC approach that are not considered in LCA and these are considered as the ‘gaps’. The following are the recommendations to address the differences and gaps in LCC and LCA in order to ensure consistency of economic and environmental assessments within the methodology. See Chapter 7 for further information:

Model concept (difference) – Principles of cost elements (LCC) of EN 60300-3-3 is adapted to introduce an environmental matrix. This uses the LCC principles as an over-arching framework for the LCAT with cost and environmental aspects sitting within this framework structure.

Time period/Life cycle (difference) – The time period of analysis for LCA is normally conducted for the entire life cycle of a product (cradle-grave) and the time period for LCC is variable. However, flexibility is required in LCA of the LCAT, allowing the environmental impacts to be studied for a specific period (e.g. maintenance, re-construction periods, etc.). This reflects the purpose of MAINLINE for assessing different maintenance and renewal alternatives. Thus, it is recommended that LCC and LCA analysis share the same time period and life cycle phases. The life cycle phases recommended are construction, operation & maintenance, end-of-life, which are consistent with life cycle phases proposed in D5.4.

Evaluation methods, i.e. discounting vs. physical flows (difference) – Recommend LCC and LCA evaluation processes to remain independent. This allows flexibility for LCC and LCA to conduct evaluation within its own rights, allowing transparency and clear presentation of cost and environmental results and providing opportunity for compliance with current international/EU standards.

Functional unit (difference) – In MAINLINE, comparison between the LCC cost and LCA environmental outputs followed by trade-off may be required between the two aspects to select the most preferable option. Thus, an appropriate functional unit (e.g. 1km of rail section renew) should be used for both analyses to enable the costs and environmental emissions (e.g. of the renewal intervention) to be compared in an equivalent basis.

Discounting/interest rate (gap) – It should be applied to LCC calculations for agency and user costs. Discounting is normally not applied to the conventional LCA analysis and the LCA results (i.e. amount of environmental impacts, e.g. Kg of CO2e) are generally not discounted. However, discounting may be applied to the monetised value of the environmental impacts to bring the future environmental costs to present values. At present, there is no widely agreeable and clear consensus on principle of discounting of the future environmental costs (see the Option 2 of Chapter 7 for further details). In general, European countries such as the U.K. have their own set of guidance of discounting on environmental impacts. As an example; the U.K. government requires monetised environmental impacts such as carbon costs to be discounted to present values based on the usual discount rates that are applied to financial costs (e.g. agency and users costs). The conventional discounting technique that applied to the financial costs is also used to discount the future environmental costs. Since there is no standard acceptable discounting practice for the environmental impacts and moreover European countries have their own guidance related to this matter, it is recommended the discounting rule and the discount rate values are to follow country specific guidance.




Moreover, since it is important that LCAT is designed for flexible use, it is deemed practical to allow the discounting rule and discount rate to be user-defined to suit IMs own country specific guidance.

The recommendations for the LCAT based on the IMs survey are given below:

In general, the LCAT should be based on standards, either international standards or EU standards.

The LCAT covers user cost and the most relevant user costs to be considered are user delays.

If possible, the LCAT should be able to carry out sensitivity analyses and probabilistic analyses. However, there is some concern from the IMs that the amount of data for such analyses in the short term may not be adequate.

Results from the LCC analyses should at least be presented in terms of NPV.

The LCAT should present both the cost and environmental drivers of a strategy.

Carbon/CO2 and waste are the most important environmental performance criteria that need consideration. This re-confirmed the study concluded in D5.2. Other criteria to be considered would be water pollution (surface water and groundwater).

Moreover, the relevant parameters for the LCAT are identified by the gap analysis and these are the common parameters used by the currently available LCC and LCA tools to evaluate life cycle cost, carbon emission and waste impacts. The most relevant parameters for LCAT are provided in the table below, with identified gaps and recommendations in achieving the IMs requirements.

Most relevant parameters

Recommendations and gaps

Time period of analysis The durations of time period vary broadly and are specific to each maintenance and renewal intervention analysis. An asset specific guidance is recommended to help IMs to determine the appropriate time period in LCAT.

Data input method This study found that IMs are not familiar with the LCA methodology. It is recommended that a simplified format of LCA analysis should be developed for LCAT and that the input method in the LCAT needs to be transparent, flexible and easy to understand. Provision of specific guidance in the LCAT is also recommended to help IMs when carrying out the analyses.

LCC discount rate The value of discount rate varies and is country specific. Recommendation is that this is a country-specific input parameter.

LCC discounting approach

Although NPV is recommended, some IMs also need other types of outputs in LCC. If possible, consideration of these other outputs (Internal Rate Return and Net Saving) is recommended in LCAT.

LCC agency, user and environmental costs

Delays are the most important user cost and should be covered in LCAT. Detailed guidance or standards on how to calculate the user costs (delays) are also needed.

LCA carbon and waste criteria

IMs strongly preferred the LCA results of carbon and waste impacts presented in monetary values. Monetary conversion functions are needed in LCAT to convert the impacts into cost values.

Whole life profile The whole life profile in LCC is identified as one of important




parameters. Such output format is not normally provided in LCA tools. Therefore, it is recommended in LCAT, if possible, to show such analyses outputs for costs (agency and user) and for environmental aspects (including environmental costs) separately.




2. General remarks

The project 'MAINtenance, renewaL and Improvement of rail transport iNfrastructure to reduce

Economic and environmental impacts' (in short MAINLINE) is an integrated project within the

EU's 7th Framework Programme. It has been part funded on the basis of the contract

SST.2011.5.2-6 between the European Union represented by the European Commission and

International Union of Railways (UIC) acting as coordinator for the project.

The main objectives of the project are:

Apply new technologies to extend the life of elderly infrastructure

Improve degradation and structural models to develop more realistic life cycle cost and

safety models

Investigate new construction methods for the replacement of obsolete infrastructure

Investigate monitoring techniques to complement or replace existing examination techniques

Develop management tools to assess whole life environmental and economic impact

The present report D5.3 Recommendations for LCAT Format has been prepared within the work

package WP5 of the MAINLINE project, named ‘Whole life environmental and economic asset

management', one of the eight work packages (WP1-WP8) dealing with relevant tasks for

maintenance, renewal and improvement of rail transport infrastructure to reduce economic and

environmental impacts.

An overview of the general organization of the project is presented in Figure 1 together with a list

of all the partners in work package WP5:




Figure 1 - General organisation of the project.

Part n° WP5 Partners Country

1 UNION INTERNATIONALE DES CHEMINS DE FER (UIC) FR

2 NETWORK RAIL INFRASTRUCTURE LTD (NR) UK

3 COWI A/S (COWI) DK

4 SINCLAIR KNIGHT MERTZ (SKM) UK

5 UNIVERSITY OF SURREY (SURREY) UK

6 TWI LIMITED (TWI) UK

7 UNIVERSIDADE DO MINHO (UMinho) PT

8 LULEA TEKNISKA UNIVERSITET (LTU) SE

11 UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE CATALUNYA (UPC) ES

12 TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAET GRAZ (TUGRAZ) AT

13 TURKIYE CUMHURIYETI DEVLET DEMIR YOLLARI ISLETMESI GENEL MUDURLUGU (TCDD)

TR

The main objective of WP5 is to create a tool (Life Cycle Assessment Tool - LCAT) that can compare different maintenance/replacement strategies for track and infrastructure based on a life cycle evaluation. The evaluation shall quantify:

- Direct economic costs - Availability (Delay costs/user cost/benefit from upgrade etc.) - Environmental impact costs




The comparison cannot be based only on the optimization of the economical and environmental aspects. A clear constraint to be taken into account by the tool in the optimization process is to guarantee a minimum target safety level to the user.

WP5 interacts with WP1-4 and WP6 in the following ways;

Inputs to WP5

WP1 will provide maintenance strategies for extended life and possible upgrades.

WP2 will provide lifetime performance assessment tools for the considered assets.

WP3 will provide replacement strategies for the considered elements.

WP4 will provide input via WP2 with condition indicators from measurements.

Outputs from WP5

WP5 will provide guidance on when to replace obsolete infrastructure to WP3

WP5 will provide dissemination and exploitation data to WP6

WP5 will assist WP6 in dissemination activities




3. Acknowledgments

This present report has been prepared within work package WP5 of the MAINLINE project by the

following team of contractors with Network Rail as the WP-leader and University of Surrey as the

subtask leader:

Network Rail (NR), United Kingdom

University of Surrey (Surrey), United Kingdom

COWI A/S (COWI), Denmark

Lulea Tekniska Universitet (LTU), Sweden

Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM), United Kingdom

Turkiye Cumhuriyeti Devlet Demir Yollari Isletmesi Genel Mudurlugu (TCDD), Turkey

TWI Limited (TWI), United Kingdom

Contributions from IMs for the questionnaire concerning LCC & LCA tools is acknowledged.




4. Introduction

4.1 Background and motivation

Growth in demand for rail transportation across Europe is predicted to continue. Much of this growth will have to be accommodated on existing track and infrastructure. This demand will increase both the rate of deterioration of these elderly assets and thus the need for shorter line closures for maintenance or renewal interventions. Planning of such interventions on elderly infrastructure should take into account the need for lower economic and environmental impacts of the intervention. This presents the need for a tool to be developed which can inform decision makers about the economic and environmental consequences of different intervention options being considered.

The overall aim of WP5 is to create a Life Cycle Assessment Tool (LCAT) that can compare different maintenance and replacement strategies for track and infrastructure based on a life cycle evaluation. The life cycle evaluation shall quantify direct economic costs, availability costs (e.g. delay costs, user cost/benefit from upgrade etc.) and environmental impact costs. Moreover, the tool should also take into account target user safety levels in the optimization process.

4.2 Scope and objectives

The objective of Task 5.3 is to carry out a gap analysis by analysing data inputs from D5.1 "Assessment of asset management tools" and D5.2 "Assessment of environmental performance tools and methods" to determine the common parameters and gaps in currently available asset management and environmental impact tools. Task 5.4 has undertaken a comprehensive review on LCC tools to identify the key parameters that need to be considered during the development of the LCAT. Because of that and due to changes in the Task 5.1 work plan, input from Task 5.4 has been used in the gap analysis instead of input from Task 5.1. The current D5.3 report contains a gap analysis of the outputs from D5.2 and D5.4. The recommendations from the analysis shall be used to formulate the LCAT, a whole life economic and environmental assessment tool. A methodology framework is an important aspect to formulate the LCAT format. Therefore, as part of the recommendations for the format, the report also contains study of possible combinations of whole life economic and environmental methodology frameworks and provides recommendations of the most appropriate methodology to be taken forward to Task 5.4 for further development.

The main forms of whole life asset management and environmental impact tools studied in this report are life cycle costing (LCC) and life cycle assessment (LCA), respectively. The LCC is the form of economical asset management tool studied in Task 5.4 to develop the LCAT system description, whilst the LCA is recommended as the most suitable form of environmental impact assessment tool by Task 5.2.

The methodology of carrying out the task is shown by the flowchart of Figure 2. The scope of each chapter of this deliverable is described in the following paragraphs.




Figure 2 – Methodology of carrying out Task 5.3

Chapter 5 contains a gap analysis from inputs of D5.2 and D5.4 to determine the common parameters and gaps of whole life asset management and environmental impact tools. The LCC and LCA parameters identified in D5.2 and D5.4 are assessed and the similarities and gaps are reported in this chapter.

Chapter 6 provides an overview of the recommendations for the parameters to be included in the LCAT from the IMs perspective. It contains information about the recommendations for relevant LCAT parameters, recommendations for the LCC and LCA components of the LCAT and the current status of existing IMs practices. This information is retrieved from an IMs survey and consultants associated with the IMs.

Chapter 7 presents four possible methodology framework options for the LCAT, which are based on available LCC and LCA methodologies. The advantages and disadvantages of each option are discussed in this chapter. It also decides on the most appropriate whole life economic and environmental methodology framework for the LCAT.

Chapter 8 summarises recommendations for the LCAT format based on the studies presented in the previous chapters. It also identifies gaps for further research.




5. Common parameters and gaps between whole life asset management and environmental impact tools

5.1 Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to conduct a gap analysis to determine the common parameters and gaps of whole life asset management and environmental impact tools. As mentioned in Section 4.2, changes in the work plan of Task 5.1 have resulted in input from Task 5.4 having been used in the gap analysis instead as the best alternative. The Task 5.4 has undertaken a comprehensive review of LCC tools and methods and has adequately identified the important LCC parameters for developing the LCAT system description in Task 5.4. The gap analysis conducted in this chapter relates to parameter inputs from LCC and LCA.

A typical LCC or LCA tool generally comprises of two primary aspects that make up its characteristics, i.e. the methodology framework and its parameters. The methodology provides a working framework on how the LCC or LCA analyses are carried out revealing the steps that are basic to the tool’s structure, whilst the parameters contained within the framework perform the functions expected from the tool. In order to provide a complete assessment to determine their commonalities, differences and gaps, the study is divided into 2 parts, i.e. assessing LCC and LCA parameters and their standard methodology frameworks (see Figure 3 below).

Figure 3 –Two parts of the conducted gap analysis study

5.2 Inputs from D5.2 and D5.4

(a) Inputs from D5.2 ‘Assessment of environmental performance tools and methods’ [1]

The aim of D5.2 is to recommend the most appropriate form of whole life environmental performance tool, based on the research undertaken on currently available tools and methods. The recommendations of the report are stated below:

It concludes that the most applicable form is the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools as they use a similar approach as the life cycle costing tools which will be at the heart of the MAINLINE LCAT.




It concludes that CO2 emissions and waste are the two most applicable categories to the MAINLINE Project and recommends that they should be included in the LCAT tool as they have featured prominently in all the results of the research undertaken.

The report also revealed that the CO2e metric is the most commonly used indicator across LCA. However CO2e values may be less readily available than other metrics. It is suggested that when deciding which carbon emissions metric is most appropriate for use in the MAINLINE LCAT, consideration should be given to the availability of datasets, data currently measured by the IMs and the units of any legislative limiting values or tax rates.

(b) Inputs from D5.4 ‘Proposed LCAT Methodology’ (preliminary version) [2]

The D5.4 literature review contains comprehensive studies of LCC tools, methodologies and related research projects. The studies have identified key LCC parameters and concluded that there is no single agreed LCC standard used in carrying out LCC assessments. It reported that the most frequently practised standards in Europe are the EN 60300-3-3 ‘Dependability management - application guide life cycle costing’ [3] and the ISO 15686-5 ‘Buildings and Constructed Assets Service Life Planning – Life Cycle Costing’ [4].

The report also identified important parameters used in LCC tools and they are assessed in Section 5.3 below.

Based on the outputs from D5.2 [1] and D5.4 [2] above, the gap analysis will concentrate on:

Typical parameters identified for LCC and LCA tools from D5.4 and D5.2, respectively.

Common methodologies followed by the LCC and LCA tools.

Carbon (CO2 and CO2e) and waste emissions. Although D5.2 has not clearly recommended CO2e (which is the metric for greenhouse gas emissions) in LCAT, due to its significance as the most commonly used metric parameter among LCA tools, it will be covered in the study. (Note: For simplicity, ‘carbon’ represents both CO2 and CO2e emissions).

5.3 Identification of typical LCC and LCA parameters from D5.2 and D5.4 and gap analysis

The most common parameters used by the currently available LCC and LCA tools to evaluate life cycle costs and environmental impacts are identified from the D5.2 and D5.4 reports. For further information about the parameters, the D5.2 and D5.4 reports provide detailed discussions on these tools. The identified parameters are compared to reveal LCC and LCA commonalities, differences and associated gaps, which are shown in Table 1 below. The parameters in LCC that are not considered in LCA, and vice-versa, are considered as the ‘gaps’ between the LCC and LCA. Regardless of the forms of tools, each of the tools’ system generally comprises of the input, evaluation and output phases. For comparison purposes, the relevant parameters will be identified within these individual phases.




Similarities/Differences LCC LCA

Input

Difference Time period of project studied - variable

Time period - normally entire product life, i.e. cradle to grave

The LCC time period varies and it is decided by the decision makers depending on their interests and goal of the analysis. The length of the time period can be of longer duration representing service life of an asset or less associating to the contractual period of a project. For LCA analysis, environmental results are normally assessed for the entire life cycle (cradle -grave) of a product. This means the LCC period of analysis can be shorter than the life cycle period of an asset in the LCA analysis.

Gap Discount rate – variable n/a

The principle of ‘time value of money’ is relevant to LCC and it suggests money has a value depending on the time (date) when the transaction occurs [4]. Discounting is applied to bring the values of the future costs into present values so that the costs can be compared at a present base year. The diminishing ‘time value of money’ is reflected in the discounted LCC costs and their values are increasingly reduced over longer period of time (in relative to the base year). However, in LCA, the magnitude of environmental emissions is not discounted over time. Instead the level of emissions is affected by the input flows, unit processes and system boundary of the product system. This shows that principle of time is highly relevant to LCC but not to cradle to grave LCA.

Difference & similarity Data input method: Asset and elements classification/product breakdown structure and cost

breakdown structure

Data input method: Product processes modelling consists of input/output flows,

unit processes and system boundary

The data input methods are different. LCC generally identifies input parameters using asset and elements classification system or product breakdown structure (e.g. track asset – rails, sleepers, ballasts, etc.) and cost breakdown structure (e.g. agency, user costs, etc). However, LCA uses a process modelling approach to model physical process flows of a product system that comprises input/output of flows (e.g. mass, energy, emissions, etc.) and unit processes (e.g. production of rails, etc.) within a defined system boundary.

If assessed in depth, both tools, to a limited extent, have similar product elements (e.g. materials, asset components, etc.) as input parameters for modelling an asset/product life. This is evidenced from comparison between LCC and LCA case studies (e.g. LCC – Innotrack reports [5] and LCA – Life cycle assessment of Bothnia Line [6]).

Evaluation

Difference (a) Evaluation method

Discounting Net Present Value (NPV) Inventory analysis and impact

assessment

LCC tools normally calculate LCC costs through a discounting technique to discount future costs to present values. On the other hand, LCA follows a physical process flow approach and involves two-stage evaluation (i.e. inventory analysis and impact assessment). The first phase is to produce a range of life cycle inventory results (e.g. gases, materials and energy emissions from the system). The results are classified, characterised and aggregated within each impact category (e.g. global warming, air pollution, etc.) at the impact assessment phase to determine the significance of the impacts. In the contrary, the LCC evaluation is




more straightforward, involving only a few main elements (cost, time, product elements) and the actual LCC is the only economic output from the evaluation.

Differences (b) Evaluation issues

Agency Carbon

User Waste

Environment

Society

LCC and LCA are used to measure two different groups of parameters, i.e. cost and environmental aspects. LCC is used to evaluate economic impact and to reduce the life cycle cost of an asset to a minimum. The type of LCC costs that are normally studied for infrastructure projects are agency (direct) costs, user costs and for some cases the environmental and society costs. Whilst the LCA is generally used to assess the potential environmental impacts of a product and to improve the environmental life cycle performance of the product. Therefore, the type of issues analysed is solely associated with environment. For MAINLINE, the environmental parameters considered are carbon and waste impacts.

Output

Similarities Deterministic forecast LCC costs Deterministic forecast emissions

Probabilistic forecast LCC costs Probabilistic forecast emissions

The LCC and LCA are iterative assessment procedures. The results are refined using further analysis methods such as standard sensitivity analysis and probabilistic analysis techniques. Both LCC and LCA use these methods to identify key drivers and deal with the uncertainties of the analysis results.

Differences Agency costs

Weight of carbon emission – e.g. kg/CO2e or kg/CO2

User costs Weight of waste emission – e.g. kg/solid

waste

Environmental costs Environmental scores – e.g. Eco-

indicator scores

Since LCC and LCA are different (economic and environmental), it is understandable that the outputs of the analyses are indicated in monetary values in LCC tools, whilst the amount of environmental emissions are measured in weight or using scores in LCA tools.

Gap Whole life profile - LCC vs. time n/a

LCC tools frequently report analyses results in whole life profiles through graphical presentations showing LCC cost values over period of time. Such result outputs are not seen in LCA tools. As discussed above, the principle of time is in principle not considered in the LCA approach.

Table 1 – Gap analysis for identified LCC and LCA parameters




5.4 Identification of basic methodology processes for LCC and LCA and gap analysis

D5.4 [2] revealed that there is no single agreed standard used by LCC practitioners and concluded that the most frequently practised standards in Europe are the EN 60300-3-3 Dependability management - application guide life cycle costing [3] and the ISO 15686-5 Buildings and Constructed Assets Service Life Planning – Life Cycle Costing [4]. However, these do not provide a detailed and standardised LCC methodology framework but focus on high-level principles and the process of life cycle costing.

As a result, the EN 60300-3-3 life cycle costing process is reviewed alongside with the life cycle costing methods provided by other relevant LCC manuals and guidance. The LCC Common Methodology by Davis Langdon, a consultant company that prepared this study for the EC [7], which provides a general methodology for the ISO 15686-5, is also considered. These LCC methods are assessed to establish the basic process stages required to form a typical LCC methodology. Since this chapter concentrates on gap analysis, the assessment table of this exercise can be found in Appendix A for reference. The LCC methods reviewed are applied to different kinds of assets (i.e. buildings, bridges, rail tracks). This is to ensure the typical LCC methodology is relevant to a variety of assets since the LCAT tool will potentially be used for different elements/assets of the rail infrastructure.

Unlike the LCC, the LCA tools follow the EN ISO 14040 methodology framework [8]. This is shown in Figure 4 below. Further description of the LCA methodology framework is provided in Appendix B.

Figure 4 EN ISO 14040 Life Cycle Assessment Framework [8]

The LCC and the LCA methodologies are compared in Table 2 below to identify the commons, differences and gaps in processes of carrying out the analyses.




LCA methodology framework of EN ISO 14040

[8]

LCC Methodology Key Steps

Comparison of LCC and LCA frameworks

Definition of goal and scope

Define project objective and scope, identify alternative options and establish parameters and assumptions

Similarity

Purpose of application - One of the applications of LCC and LCA is for comparative studies, where different alternative options are evaluated and compared to identify the most favourable option that meets the stated goal and objectives of the analysis.

Difference Time period of analysis – See Table 1 above. Functional units – The concept of functional unit is essential to LCA. It is defined in the EN ISO 14040 as the quantification of performance of the product system to provide a reference unit to which the inputs and outputs are related to and is used for comparison of analysis results [8]. A typical example of the functional unit metric used in rail-related LCA assessment is ‘the amount of emission per km of railway line over 60 years’ for the Bothnia Railway Line [6]. On the other hand, the functional unit is not specifically emphasised in the currently available LCC standards, i.e. ISO 15686-5 [4] and EN 60300-3-3 [3]. It is suggested that the output requirements are defined by the decision makers/users, depending on the goal and interest of the study [4, 7]. For example, the functional unit of an LCC study can either be the total maintenance cost during the entire life of a railway line or within a defined operational contract period, or it can be more specific i.e. maintenance and repair costs per km of railway line over 60 years, which depends on the goal and interest of the LCC study.

Develop LCA system model based on ISO 14040, which consists of:

- Product system - Unit process - Input flows (materials and

energy resources).

- Output flows (materials and emissions)

- System boundary

Develop LCC model structure Based on EN 60300-3-3 [3], the modelling involves:

- Cost breakdown structure

- Product/work breakdown structure

- Selection of cost categories

Product system modelling is not being classified as a distinct phase in the ISO 14040 LCA methodology framework but appears to be part of the definition of the scope phase. For the purpose of comparing the LCC and LCA models in this report, the LCA system model is considered individually in this section.

Difference LCC and LCA model concepts – Although LCC and LCA develop models for their analyses, the composition of the LCC and LCA models is different. Following the EN 60300-3-3 [3], the LCC model is based on the cost element concept and the aspects of the LCC model are identified by three dimensions, i.e. product breakdown structure, cost category and time in life cycle phases. On the other hand, the LCA model of the EN 14040 [8] is a physical process-flow model and, therefore, consists of input flows of materials and energy resources, unit processes that make up the product system, output flows of materials and emissions and system boundary. This comparison shows that LCC and LCA have different




- Selection of cost elements

- Cost estimations

modelling concepts.

Inventory analysis (data collection, calculation and validation, relating the data to unit processes and functional units)

Assemble cost and time based data.

Gap

Timing of interventions (actions) – Timing of interventions (actions) is an important factor that affects the values of the LCC costs. For example, the discounted cost of a repair work undertaken in 10 years from present is less than the cost of an intervention carried out in 5 years from present; furthermore, the cost depends on the interest rate used. Often, the timing of the intervention works is assessed during LCC analysis to determine the most preferable time (year) to undertake the works, resulting in the minimum life cycle cost without compromising the technical constraints. However, the issue of timing for intervention to produce least emission impact (e.g. waste) is not normally considered in the LCA analysis process. The effect of output emissions are defined by the input flows (e.g. materials) and work processes within the product system adopted. In summary, it shows that time is highly relevant to LCC but not to the cradle to grave LCA.

Inventory analysis (data aggregation, refining system boundary and production of inventory analysis with LCI results) and impact assessment

LCC evaluation, which involves

- Discounting future costs to NPV.

- Timing for course of actions.

- Compute discounted NPV costs for each alternative option.

Difference Evaluation process - See Table 1 Gap Discounting – See Table 1

Life cycle results interpretation:

- Identification of significant issues.

- Evaluation by completeness check, sensitivity check, consistency check and other checks. Conclusion, limitation and recommendations.

LCC results and interpretation. Sensitivity Analysis and Uncertainty Analysis.

Similarity Sensitivity and uncertainty (probabilistic) analysis – See Table 1

Table 2 – Gap analysis for LCC and LCA methodology processes




5.5 Summary of the gap analysis

At general level, the LCC and LCA process of carrying out analyses is quite similar, where the common steps have been identified as ‘definition of goals & scope of the project’, ‘build model and assemble data’, ‘analysis evaluation’ and ‘results output and interpretation including sensitivity and uncertainty analysis’. However, when assessed in detail, there are significant differences in terms of their model concepts and evaluation process involved. Moreover, there are principles and parameters in the LCC approach that are not considered in LCA. These are considered as the ‘gaps’ and have been identified as the following: discounting, timing of interventions/actions and whole life profile (cost vs. time). All these gap items are associated with the principle of time, which as discussed in the previous section, is not normally considered in LCA analyses and hence not included within current LCA tools. See Table 3 below for a summarised finding of the gap analysis.

The differences and gaps are addressed in detail in Chapter 7 to develop a whole life economic and environmental methodology framework for the LCAT. This is to ensure compatibility and consistency of the two approaches to evaluate whole life economic and environmental aspects.

In the next chapter, an overview of the IMs’ point of view on LCC and LCA tools is presented. The relevant LCC and LCA parameters identified in Table 1 are benchmarked against IMs demands to identify gaps of the current available LCC and LCA tools and the IMs criteria for the LCAT.

Similarities Differences Gaps

Purpose of application Functional unit Principle of time - Timing of interventions, discounting/discount

rate and whole life profile Sensitivity and uncertainty (probabilistic) analysis

Time period – project variable vs. product life cycle

LCC and LCA model concepts - data input methods, and cost element matrix

vs. physical flows concepts)

Analysis objective, i.e economic vs. environmental

Table 3 – Summary of the gap analysis for LCC and LCA

5.6 References

[1] MAINLINE, D5.2 Assessment of environmental performance tools and methods, ML-D5_2-F, 2012.

[2] MAINLINE, D5.4 Proposed LCAT methodology, ML-D5_4_P10, 2012.

[3] INNOTRACK, Guideline for LCC and RAMS Analysis (deliverables D6.1.1 -6.5.4).

[4] Life cycle assessment of railways and rail transports – Application in environmental product declarations (EDP) for the Bothnia Line, Swedish Environmental Research Institute, 2010.

[5] EN 60300-3-3 Dependability Management – Life cycle costing analysis - application guide.

[6] EN ISO 15686-5 Life cycle planning – Life cycle costing.

[7] Life cycle costing as a contribution to sustainable construction: A common methodology, Davis Langdon, 2007, http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/construction/studies/life-cycle-costing_en.htm.

[8] EN ISO 14040 Environmental Management – Life cycle assessment.

http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/construction/studies/life-cycle-costing_en.htm

http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/construction/studies/life-cycle-costing_en.htm




6. Recommendation for relevant parameters for LCAT

6.1 Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of the recommendations for the parameters to be included in the LCAT. Such recommendations will strongly depend on the role of the people who are asked to formulate them. Therefore, this chapter contains information about the recommendations for relevant parameters for the LCAT retrieved from IMs as well as consultants within the MAINLINE project working for the IMs. The MAINLINE project will naturally, within the project objective, try to fulfil the needs and wishes of the IMs for such LCAT.

The input from IMs has been gathered from interviews of six (6) IMs around Europe.

6.2 Determination of LCAT performance criteria

This section is based on interviews of six (6) European IMs. The affiliation of the IMs is given below.

Country Organisation Contact person

Finland VR Mr Janne Wuorenjuuri

Germany Deutsche Bahn Mrs Britta Schewe

Hungary MAV Mr Máthé András

Sweden Trafikverket Mr Lennart Lindblad

Turkey TCDD Ms Eda Bayar

United Kingdom Network Rail Mr Brian Bell

In the following sub-sections, the answers provided by the IMs are divided into different categories. Information related to the LCC and LCA tools, if any, used at present by the IMs is given initially. The LCAT to be developed consists of an LCC tool as well as an LCA tool (integrated). Recommendations from the IMs for each of these tools are provided in separate sub-sections. Finally the recommendations of the IMs to the methodology to be adapted for the LCAT are provided in a separate sub-section.

As seen from the above, six (6) IMs were interviewed concerning their use of LCC and LCA tools as well as discussing their general expectations for the MAINLINE LCAT to be developed. Consequently, the statistical basis is sparse and interpretation of the answers should not be too strict.

6.2.1 IM information concerning existing LCC and LCA tools

This section contains information about the features of the IMs existing LCC and LCA tools. This would help defining the current status of the IMs in order to define the point of departure for the development of the LCAT.




6.2.1.1 LCC analyses

The majority (4/6) of the IMs indicate that they already carry out life cycle costing studies. However, only 2 of 6 indicate that they are using LCC tools to carry out such analyses. Otherwise, LCC calculations are performed using e.g. Excel-based spreadsheets (also mentioned as LCC tools in the following). LCC studies are normally performed for large scale maintenance and renewal projects, and such analyses are mainly carried out using custom-made LCC tools, i.e. tools that are not commercially available. Furthermore, IMs indicate that LCC analyses are only performed for certain asset types (primarily bridges and tunnels).

According to the IMs, the LCC tools already used do not comply with international standards such as ISO 15686-5 Life Cycle Costing and EN 60300-3-3 Dependability Management – Life Cycle Costing. The reason for this might be that the above standards are generic in nature.

All IMs indicate that their LCC tools are capable of taking user costs into consideration. However, only user delays are covered by the LCC tools. One IM answered that though the LCC tool could take the cost of user delays into consideration, it was not used in practice as there were no standards on how to obtain such costs. Thus establishing general guidelines was suggested in order to perform such calculations.

Sensitivity analyses are carried out by half of the IMs whereas probability analyses are carried out by only one of the interviewed IMs.

All LCC tools present the results in terms of NPV.

Planning of future interventions is based on experience from previous, similar projects and not degradation models of the asset.

6.2.1.2 LCA analyses

At present LCA analysis is not common practice for all IMs interviewed, i.e. some organisations have limited knowledge of LCA. The majority does not consider LCA for maintenance projects and only a little less than half of the interviewed IMs consider LCA analyses as part of renewal projects (in some way or another, e.g. maybe only waste is considered). IMs indicate that LCA analyses are only performed for certain asset types (primarily bridges and tunnels) and only on large scale projects. Furthermore, these analyses are primarily qualitative.

The existing LCA tools consider CO2, noise, and air pollution as well as the environmental impact from the track itself during service.

6.2.2 Recommendations for LCAT

Recommendations for the MAINLINE LCAT as provided by the IMs are given in the following.

6.2.2.1 Recommendations for the LCC part of the LCAT

Generally speaking, IMs recommend that the LCAT should be based on standards, either international standards (indicated by 2) or EU standards (indicated by 1). However, the IMs did not suggest any specific standard to be adopted. One IM stressed that the most important issue concerning the adoption of standards is that the chosen standard should not be too strict or constraining for the IMs.




IMs recommend that the LCAT covers user costs. The most relevant user costs to be considered are user delays as well as increased personal risks. It was stressed by the IMs that increased personal risks (safety) is an important issue, but this should be covered by existing legislation, codes, standards and guidelines, i.e. excluded from the LCAT. IMs considered discomfort as a subjective matter that should not be included in monetary terms.

If possible, the LCAT should be able to carry out sensitivity analyses (positive feedback from all the interviewed) and probability analyses. However, there is some concern from the IMs that the amount of data for such analyses in the short term may not be adequate.

Results from the LCC analyses should at least be presented in terms of NPV, but it was suggested by 1 IM to include other formats such as Internal Rate of Return (IRR) and Net Saving (NS) since these results could be used at other levels within the IM-organisation. Regardless the format applied, the output should be easily understandable.

All IMs interviewed indicated that it would be of high importance if the LCAT could present the cost drivers of a strategy.

Future interventions and O, M & R plans in general could preferably be based on degradation models, but a number of the IMs are not familiar with planning based on mathematical degradation models (it is also noted that there is a great variety in degradation models and data dependent on the asset types considered, see D2.1). Thus this is not considered as high priority by the IMs.

6.2.2.2 Recommendations for the LCA part of the LCAT

The majority of the IMs would consider CO2 as a highly important performance criterion, and 80% of the responses acknowledged waste as either medium or high important as performance criterion.

Other criteria to be considered would be water pollution (surface water and groundwater) and one IM stated that depletion of natural resources, land contamination and biodiversity is highly important.

Sensitivity analyses and probabilistic analyses would be appreciated by the IMs, but one IM noticed that probability analyses may be difficult due to the scarce amount of data available for such analyses.

6.2.3 Integration of LCC and LCA analyses into LCAT

Three options for the methodology of valuing environmental impacts to be adopted for the LCAT were presented to the IMs. These three options are briefly described below and in Chapter 7 in detail:

Option 1: The LCAT presents results from LCC and LCA analyses in separate units, i.e. results from LCC analyses are presented in monetary units whereas LCA results are presented in terms of amount of emission values. Finally the IM judges the different alternatives by using his/her own ranking system.

Option 2: The LCAT presents results from the LCA and LCC analyses in monetary units. LCA results are converted into monetary units using pre-defined transferring functions.




Options 3 and 4: LCA and LCC analyses are performed by the LCAT and the results are converted into performance score using a pre-defined ranking system.

The majority of the IMs (3 of 5 responses received for this part) chose the 2nd option as their preferred methodology. The IMs indicated that this option would provide easy interpretative results which would help when communicating decisions. This is due to the fact that monetary unit is common and important when making decisions. Moreover, the methodology should also provide a breakdown of cost and environmental impacts and present the proportion of monetary value allocated to each criterion (LCC or LCA) in percentage.

In addition, 3 of 5 IMs would prefer one complete LCAT as opposed to a set of algorithms applicable for their existing asset management tools. Their motivation for this decision is that existing tools are difficult to use at different levels of the organisation, and consequently the use of the tools is not widespread in the organisation. 2 of 5 IMs would prefer a set of algorithms applicable for their existing tools.

6.2.4 The consultants’ views on LCAT performance criteria

The experiences of two consultants within the MAINLINE project (COWI A/S and SKM), when working on projects for IMs, are given in the following sub-sections.

6.2.4.1 COWI's experience

Rail Net Denmark has no formal requirement or formalised procedures to consultants for finding the optimal bridge solution for a new bridge or the optimal solution for a repair project. However, Rail Net Denmark has a set of guidelines, recommendations and standard solutions which must be used. The solutions are determined through a formalised system of phases, where each phase must be approved by Rail Net Denmark before the consultant can move forward to the next phase.

Rail Net Denmark has no formal method of including indirect - or user costs (associated with road and rail traffic). However, the normal requirement to the consultants is to make projects which require minimum track possession time and minimum user inconvenience for road users (besides general Country specific legal obligations). By minimizing the track possession time, the user costs (delays, detours, etc.) are indirectly minimized. LCA analyses are not carried out as part of projects for Rail Net Denmark. However, during projects there is a constant strive towards environmentally friendly solutions.

Usually, larger bridge renovations or repairs of rail carrying bridges are executed during track renewal, therefore the time allocated to each bridge can be anywhere between 3 days and 21 days and in some cases even longer. This means that all bridges within the track renewal programs which require repair now or within the next 20-25 years are repaired during this period. This means that there should be no need for track possession time on that part of the railway for the next 25 years. As a consequence, repair of individual bridges requiring track possession time are rare and must be limited to a few days and usually weekends during summer or other holidays where track closure has a minimum of traffic inconveniences.

For larger projects (larger than €6 million) a special budgeting model must be used for projects. However, this model is primarily to evaluate and assess the financial risk associated with the projects - not a way of minimising the direct and indirect cost.




6.2.4.2 SKM's experience

The SKM Rail team has undertaken cost analyses of rail assets for Network Rail, the UK’s major rail infrastructure owner, and for London Underground Ltd. The SKM team has also supplied asset management decision-support systems to both rail owners in UK.

Network Rail uses a continuous programme of asset examinations and structural assessments to determine where repairs and replacements are required. The prioritisation of work is based on safety considerations and budgetary constraints. All bridges are visually inspected every year (without special access equipment) and inspected in detail every six years (using scaffolding etc as required). If significant problems are identified during these inspections then ‘assessments’ are undertaken which involve engineering calculation of the capacity of the bridge.

In the context of Network Rail’s method of working it is important to note the distinction between ‘inspections’ which are observations of the structure on site, and ‘assessments’ which also include engineering calculations.

At the six-yearly ‘detailed’ inspections Network Rail records a condition score for every group of ‘minor elements’ of the bridge, e.g. transverse girders. These take the form of two-part alpha-numeric scores, e.g. ‘B2’, where the letter represents the severity of any deterioration and the number indicates its extent, ‘A1’ meaning as-new condition. These scores are recorded in detail but also aggregated to give an overall condition score for the whole structure, ranging from 0 to 100 meaning as-new. This system of scoring is called the Bridge Condition Marking Index (BCMI), formerly SCMI. The national coverage of these scores is continually increasing and currently (2012) the majority of bridges have been scored once and many have been scored twice thus providing raw data on the changes in condition over time.

As part of their option selection process for major bridge projects Network Rail uses STAMP (STructures Asset Management Process) to compare alternative intervention sequences. This process compares the NPV of numerous combinations of possible interventions provided by the user. The process takes account of the costs of any operational disruptions caused by the interventions or by operational restrictions and any costs resulting from restrictions in load or speed required while the asset is awaiting repair. In the form used by Network Rail STAMP does not take account of environmental impacts, although subsequent versions of STAMP account for this.

Until recently London Underground Limited (LUL) contracted out the maintenance of infrastructure to three Infrastructure Companies (‘InfraCos’) which were required to maintain and progressively improve the assets. InfraCos were also required to annually deliver to LUL detailed data which itemised the any ‘concern’ about the individual assets. This data was used to assess the rate of improvement of the condition of the whole population of assets. Since 2009 LUL has taken back responsibility for infrastructure maintenance itself.

Under the InfraCo system there was no requirement for formal assessment of the life-cycle strategy for each asset but simply a contractual obligation on the InfraCos to improve condition. This left the InfraCos free to choose where to intervene in order to achieve the required improvements in condition.




6.3 Recommendations of most relevant parameters for LCAT and identification of potential gaps

The relevant parameters for the LCAT are identified in Section 5.3. These are the common parameters used by the currently available LCC and LCA tools to evaluate life cycle cost, carbon emission and waste impacts. Recommendations from IMs, as reported above, do not alter this picture. In Table 4, IMs’ recommendations and identified gaps are included.

Typical key parameters for LCC

Typical key parameters for LCA

IM recommendation

Gap IM recommendation

Gap

Input phase

Time period of considered - variable

Important variable

Please provide asset specific guidance

None Time period (life cycle) of product, e.g. cradle -grave

Important variable N/A

Data input method: Asset and elements classification/ Product Breakdown System and Cost Breakdown System

Important, needs to be transparent, flexible and easy to understand

Only some IMs have their own asset management and LCC/LCA tools

Data input method: Product system modelling based on process flow approach, consists of input/output flows, unit processes, system boundary and product system.

Important

Please provide asset specific

guidance.

IMs are not that familiar with the LCA methodology.

Discount rate Important and country specific

None N/A N/A

Evaluation phase

(a) Evaluation methodology

Discounting approach, i.e. Net Present Value

Important Please also consider IRR and NS for other parts of the IM organisation

None Inventory analysis and impact assessment

N/A N/A




Typical key parameters for LCC

Typical key parameters for LCA

(b) Evaluation issues

LCC costs (agency, user, environment and society)

Important Delays are the most important user cost.

Guidance or standards on how to calculate user costs (delays) are needed.

Carbon Important issue Monetary transferring function is needed.

Waste Important issue Monetary transferring function is needed.

Output phase

Deterministic forecast LCC costs

Important Several IMs are used to these methods.

None Deterministic forecast of emissions

N/A N/A

Probabilistic forecast LCC costs

Important Lack of data for these models are identified (varies between the different assets).

Probabilistic forecast of emissions

N/A N/A

Agency, user and environmental costs

See above LCC costs

See above LCC costs

Weight of CO2 /CO2E emission

Transparent monetisation is recommended.

Monetary transferring function is needed.

Environmental scores - e.g. eco-indicators

N/A N/A

Whole life profile (LCC vs. time)

Important As much transparency as possible needed.

Table 4 – Most relevant LCC and LCA parameters with gaps and recommendations.




7. Recommendation for potential whole life economic and environmental assessment methodology framework for LCAT

7.1 Introduction

The LCAT is developed to undertake whole life economic and environmental impact assessment of maintenance and renewal activities on railway infrastructure assets. This chapter proposes and assesses four potential methodology framework options for whole life economic and environmental assessment and the most appropriate methodology framework is recommended for the LCAT format. The underlying principles of the potential methodologies are based on LCC and LCA, the two forms of tools proposed in D5.4 and D5.2, respectively. Moreover, this chapter also proposes solutions to address the differences and gaps of LCC and LCA identified previously in Chapter 5, whilst the common parameters are integrated into the potential methodologies. This will also serve towards identifying missing components from currently available asset management tools and ensure their incorporation into the tool to be developed within the MAINLINE project.

7.2 Potential methodology framework options for whole life economic and environmental assessment tool

The potential LCAT will require flexibility to meet a range of demands and needs from the European railway organisations. For example, it will be used for different goals of project studies, for various types of rail infrastructure assets and for different kinds of local asset management system arrangements. Therefore, the proposed methodology framework options need to be flexible. Hence, the methodology proposed is a general (high-level) form of framework that can be applicable or suit the different situations mentioned above. To allow flexibility, the methodology options proposed are primary (independent) alternatives of LCC and LCA combinations. This provides the opportunity for future combination of two or more of these primary options in the LCAT, if this is deemed as the preferred choice.

When integrating economic and environmental assessments, the key issues are ‘how these two different assessments are carried out together’ and ‘how their assessment results (outputs) are presented to support determination of the most appropriate maintenance and renewal alternative solution’. The methodologies of Options 1, 2 and 3 deal with these issues by providing three different alternatives (i.e. separate LCC and LCA assessments, conversion of environmental impacts of LCA assessment into LCC costs and conversion of LCC costs and LCA environmental impacts into performance scores, respectively). These are the three main available methods for the combination of LCC with LCA, concluded from literature surveys conducted for D5.2 [1] and for this task (e.g. BEES tool [2], ‘Risk-based decision making tool for sustainable bridge management’ (N-H.Jin of University of Surrey) [3], Davis Langdon LCC contribution to sustainable construction [4] , Environment & Sustainability (Hardisty) [5]). The Option 1 provides a framework for LCC and LCA to be conducted separately and each representing the results in usual LCC costs and amount of environmental emission, respectively. On the other hand, Options 2 and 3 intend to combine the LCC and LCA result outputs to provide overall economic and environmental assessment results either in monetary costs or performance scores.




In addition to the three previous options, Option 4 provides an alternative way for conducting LCC and LCA analyses. Instead of undertaking a full LCA analyses for every single project studied, the environmental impacts and environmental performance scores are pre-calculated for different maintenance and renewal intervention activities and plans. These LCA environmental outputs are collected in an environmental inventory which can be readily used with LCC analyses. The scores of the identified intervention activities and plans are retrieved, aggregated and combined with the LCC outputs to produce overall economic and environmental assessment results for alternative options studied. Similar to Option 3, the combined overall economic and environmental assessment results of Option 4 are presented in performance scores. Below, detailed descriptions of the four options are presented and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed.

The gap analysis of Chapter 5 has identified the differences and gaps of currently available LCC and LCA tools (highlighted in ‘italic bold’ in the first methodology option). Recommendations to address these differences and gaps are proposed allowing compatibility and consistency of the LCC and LCA analyses within the LCAT when conducting the whole life economic and environmental assessment.

Option 1: Separate LCC and LCA analysis results

Figure 5 - Option 1: Separate LCC and LCA analyses flow-chart

The methodology concept of Option 1 is based on the recommendations from Davis Langdon [4] which suggest LCC and LCA analyses are to be carried out separately. Following this, the




economic and environmental results form the two criteria within a broader evaluation process, or either the LCC can form an input into the LCA or vice-versa.

(a) Project objective and scope

As the first step, a clear and comprehensive project objective and scope are to be defined for the economic and environmental assessment study in LCAT. This is to ensure the analysis assumptions and input parameters always fit the objective of the project study. The definitions required include:

Objective of the project study - helps better defining the scope of the study and allows identification of appropriate alternative options for the study.

Scope of the study – determine the asset system to be studied, time period and establish the analysis boundary, i.e. what is to be included/excluded.

Project performance requirements – in terms of asset functional performance, safety level, budget constraint and time/availability constraint. This is to ensure that the options analysed can achieve the required project performance stated.

The functional unit is normally defined as part of the LCA’s goal and scoping definition process. In the LCC approach, there is no specific requirement to define a functional unit and it is left to the decision maker to decide the most appropriate reference unit for the expected outputs and normally based on the goal and interest of the study. In MAINLINE, comparison between the LCC cost and LCA environmental outputs followed by trade-off may be required between the two aspects to select the most preferable option. Thus, an appropriate functional unit (e.g. 1km of rail section renew) should be used for both analyses to enable the costs and environmental emissions (e.g. of the renewal intervention) to be compared in an equivalent basis. The functional unit defined shall be based on the goal of the study that gives the expected output performance required of the asset system studied. For example, by defining the ‘functional unit’ of the study (e.g. renewal of 1km of rail section that is suitable to support heavy load trains) as the ‘intervention’, the LCA & LCC can be closely aligned with each application of an intervention generating a financial cost and a set of environmental impacts. This approach will simplify the process by allowing both costs and impacts to be generated side-by-side. Of course, as with any environmental assessment, this requires the environmental impacts (e. g. CO2 and Waste) to be known for each intervention type.

(b) Identify alternative options

Only alternative options that fulfil the performance requirements of the project will be analysed. The minimum number of options to be considered is two; a base-case and an alternative option. The base-case is normally the existing scenario without changes. It acts as the reference against which other alternative options can be assessed. This is to allow performance levels of the alternative proposals to be determined in terms of their cost-effectiveness and environmental effects.

(c) Establish project parameters and assumptions

The parameters for inclusion into the LCC and LCA model systems are to be established, based on the definition of the project scope and system boundary. The In/Out frame concept, adapted from INNOTRACK [6], can be applied to assist with the identification of the parameters that are part of the project study. The In/Out frame is introduced to provide transparency and clear identification of parameters to be included into the project boundary.

At project level, the parameters of the MAINLINE study can be categorised into three groups, i.e. project parameters (i.e. parameters that are common to both LCC and LCA analysis), LCC




related parameters and LCA related parameters. An example of the MAINLINE project study using the In/Out frame concept is illustrated in Figure 6 below.

LCC parameters Project parameters LCA parameters

Economic:

Interest rate, inflation rate etc.

Time-related:

Period of analysis, life cycle phases (construction,

operation & maintenance and end-of-life).

Input flows into system: raw materials, fuel etc.

LCC: Total cost categorised into agency, user and society costs etc.

Agency costs :

Unit costs of materials, plants & equipment,

labour, energy & water consumptions, transport

etc.

Product structure related:

Rail, sleeper etc.

Output flows of system:

carbon emission -

Inventory results (CO2, CH4 etc.), quantities

etc.

Waste emission – non-hazardous, hazardous

etc.

LCA: Total amount of CO2-equivalent, waste etc.

User cost:

Unit costs of delay, unavailability, accidents

etc.

Traffic-related:

Traffic loadings, frequency of train services etc.

Unit processes: e.g acquisition of raw

materials, manufacturing of rail,

transport to site, removal of existing rail, installation of new rail, disposal of old rail etc.

Combined LCC & LCA: LCC cost and monetised value of environmental impact

Work/process activities related:

Rail installation, rail disposal etc.

IN OUT

System boundary

Figure 6 - An example of the In/Out frame concept – adapted from INNOTRACK [6]

In addition, assumptions are normally made about the study and typical assumptions such as forecast of future traffic volume, unavailability rate of service of the asset and recyclability rate of materials, etc.

When comparing alternatives, it would be sufficient to include only those items, which differ between the options under consideration. To include parameters which are the same for all options would not assist in the selection process and could involve a lot of unnecessary research. Conversely, differences between options should not be excluded from the analysis: for example, dismantling and disposal of different types of assets might have significantly different impacts on their whole-life costs and the environmental impact.

(d) LCC and LCA analysis

In general, the analysis phase involves building the LCC and LCA models and performing the necessary evaluations. The environmental categories to be considered in an LCA analysis are the carbon and waste impacts. Specific methods of carrying out LCC and LCA are not specified




in the option since it covers the general (high-level) methodology framework that deals with combination of economic and environmental assessment issue. Moreover, all options allow LCC and LCA analyses to be undertaken using currently available LCC and LCA tools and the methods for carrying out the analyses are specific to the tools concerned.

As a minimum, a deterministic analysis is carried out to produce deterministic LCC and LCA values for comparison among the options. This includes sensitivity analysis to identify the key drivers towards the cost-effectiveness and environmental performance. Depending on the goal of the project study, probabilistic analysis can be carried out to account for uncertainties and improve the reliability of the analysis results.

Systems modelling

The LCC and LCA model concepts are different. The LCA modelling is based on the physical process flow approach where flows from a unit process will be fed into subsequent unit processes and/or released from the system (e.g. air and water emissions). However, the LCC costs do not follow this concept and cannot be treated in the same manner using the LCA physical flow principles. Still, both costs and environmental impacts can be considered as the outcome of interventions and thereby treated in parallel.

In order to address the issue and enable the LCC and LCA system to be modelled in a consistent manner, the principles of the EN 60300-3-3 cost element [7] can be adopted to the environmental aspects. The EN 60300-3-3 [7] states that cost element is the link between an individual item of the product and a cost category under consideration, and it involves a three-dimensional matrix, i.e. product structure, cost category and life cycle phase, as illustrated in Figure 7.

Figure 7 - Cost element concept with three dimensional matrix based on EN 60300-3-3 [7]

Similarly, an environmental matrix (see Figure 8), adapted from the EN 60300-3-3 [7], can be introduced into the overall economic and environmental assessment to ensure the LCC and LCA model systems are coherent at project level. The environmental element can comprise of three dimensions, i.e. product structure, life cycle phase and environmental category. The environmental category represents associated environmental impacts (e.g. carbon and waste emissions under consideration). The environmental matrix becomes the link between project’s product elements and environmental emissions in consideration, and allows the environmental emission to be assessed for different life cycle phases of an asset.




Figure 8 - Environmental element concept – adapted from EN 60300-3-3 [7]

As an example, Figure 9 shows the relationship between product structure and cost/environmental structures. Using the cost and environmental matrix, it provides an over-arching framework structure with cost and environmental impact aspects within this structure, to enable LCC and LCA analyses to be undertaken in consistency. At the basic level, the concept applies when studying an intervention since each intervention will produce the cost and environment implications. The cost and environmental implications can occur at different life cycle phases of an asset and for various components of the asset system, depending on the intervention actions selected in the study.

Figure 9: Examples of LCC and LCA models linked between product (asset system), LCC costs and LCA environmental emissions.

Time Period of Analysis

The LCA time period of analysis is normally conducted for the entire life cycle of a product (cradle-grave) and the time period for LCC is variable. However, flexibility is required in LCA of the LCAT, allowing the environmental impacts to be studied for a specific period (e.g. maintenance, re-construction periods, etc.). This reflects the purpose of MAINLINE to assess different maintenance and renewal alternatives. Moreover, the LCA studies of the Bothnia Line Project [8] show that it is possible to divide LCA analyses into three activities groups, i.e. construction, maintenance and operation. Thus, it is recommended that the time period should be

Product breakdown structure

Rail

Sleeper

Cost breakdown structure

Construction phase:

Install rail o Cost of rail product o Cost of labour o Cost of plant &

equipment Install sleeper

Operation & maintenance phase:

Rail o Cost of inspections o Cost of grinding

repairs Sleeper

Environmental breakdown structure

Construction phase:

Install rail o Emissions (e.g.CO2,

waste & etc.) from rail product

o Emissions from plants & equipment

o Emissions from transport to site

Install sleeper

Operation & maintenance phase:

Rail o Emissons from

inspection travelling o Emissions from

grinding Sleeper




equivalent for LCC and LCA analyses and the life cycles follow the construction, maintenance & operation and end-of-life phases.

Evaluation processes

As discussed in the previous section, the tasks undertaken in the LCC and LCA evaluation process are different. The LCA involves two mandatory tasks, i.e. inventory analysis to identify all forms of LCI results (e.g. CO2, methane, water, waste etc), and impact assessment to classify these LCI results to the relevant impacts and convert the results within an impact category to an equivalent reference. For LCC, the evaluation process is more straightforward involving the discounting technique to convert input costs into NPV. Thus, the two-step tasks of LCA are not relevant to LCC since the only form of LCC result identified through the analysis is the cost. For simplicity, it is appropriate for these evaluation processes to remain independent. The benefits are:

Allowing flexibility in the LCC and LCA evaluation processes to carry out individual calculations. This mitigates any potential conflicts between the two respective approaches such as treatment of cost as a physical flow if cost is analysed using LCA process-flow principles.

Allowing transparency when the evaluations are undertaken. This enables clear presentation of output results for cost and environmental aspects and allows trade-off between the two criteria to be performed.

Allowing compliance with the current EN 60300-3-3, ISO 15686 and EN ISO 14040 standards. The compliance of the tool with the standards is likely to be important to the railway organisations as part of their quality accreditation criteria.

Allowing the discounting to be undertaken in the LCC analysis only as there is currently no agreeable and clear consensus on discounting future environmental costs as discussed later in the chapter.

The proposals above also apply to Options 2, 3 and 4. For Option 1, the detailed calculations of LCC and LCA are carried out separately and each of them produces its own LCC costs and environmental emissions for the options under consideration.

(e) LCC and LCA results

The LCC results are presented in Net Present Value (NPV) by default, which is the most commonly used output indicator in standard tools. Depending on the demands from IMs, other forms of LCC outputs such as Internal Rate of Return (IRR), Net Saving (NS) can be included for other intended purposes. This is to be confirmed by the needs of the IMs through the assessment of the LCAT functional performance.

The two environmental impacts analysed are CO2 and waste emission, as recommended by the D5.2 report. In LCA, the carbon emission is normally measured in CO2 equivalent to assess global warming impact. CO2 is not the only contributor to global warming and it is appropriate to undertake the LCA analysis for greenhouse gases and present the result in CO2 equivalent unit. This can be broken down to reveal the individual CO2 emission.

The waste result/output is normally presented in weight per run (e.g. kg/km run).




(f) Selection of the best alternative using qualitative evaluation

For Option 1, a number of assessment and selection approaches are recommended below, with reference to the Davis Langdon’s Common Methodology [4]:

Using the results from the LCC and LCA as two of the assessment criteria in the evaluation of the intervention options.

Use of LCA as a means of identifying intervention options with good environmental performance (carbon and waste impacts), and then carrying out a LCC analysis on those short-listed options only.

Use of LCC to short-list a few cost effective options, then conduct LCA analysis on those options only.

All the approaches above will depend on the priorities and judgements of the decision maker to decide the most balanced/optimum solution. The Davis Langdon Common Methodology [4] does not specify in detail how the above recommendations should be conducted. However, the cost and environmental aspects are normally not the only two important factors when deciding the best renewal or maintenance alternatives in an infrastructure project. Other important factors such as safety, risk and social aspects are also required to be taken into account by the IMs. Thus, the first recommendation is considered the most appropriate approach to suit the MAINLINE. In addition, the first recommendation has been practised in the U.K. transport sector using the NATA Appraisal Summary Table (NATA AST) [9] to determine the most favourable proposal of transport investment and improvement schemes.

The NATA AST is a form of performance matrix, developed by the U.K Government Department of Transport, to summarise the potential impacts of each option on a single page where performances are assessed against criteria set out. These criteria are economic, environmental, safety, economy, accessibility and integration. The AST is designed to provide decision makers with a concise overview of impacts across the board. The single page format reduces the risk that some impacts will be overlooked or that some may be given disproportionate emphasis. Decision makers must apply their judgement, taking account of the views of stakeholders, to weigh the impacts and reach a qualitative assessment about the overall ‘value for money’ of each option. An example of a NATA AST for a highway project is shown in Figure 10 below. [9, 10].

A similar form of performance matrix can be developed to guide the European railway IMs when making qualitative evaluation of the LCC cost and environmental impacts with other key criteria.




Figure 10: Example of NATA Appraisal Summary Table an illustrated scheme [10]

Advantages

Transparency

In this option, the LCC and LCA analyses are conducted and results are presented individually. This allows transparency of results between economic and environmental aspects for comparison.

Non-quantitative impacts

The performance matrix allows the information to be presented in quantitative and non-quantitative (descriptive) methods. Thus, it enables impacts that are difficult to be quantified to be included in the options appraisal.

Disadvantages

Subjective interpretation

The U.K. Transport Appraisal Guidance [9] highlights that the performance matrix, such as the NATA AST, does not provide a mechanistic way to estimate the overall impact values of each option. The method requires decision makers to make subjective interpretations of the matrix. It is prone to unjustifiable assumptions and errors in judgements, which potentially could lead to incorrect ranking of the considered option.

Inconsistency of decision result

This form of non-numerical analysis is prone to results inconsistency since each project is




judged and assessed by different groups of decision makers. It relies heavily on the judgements and discussion outcomes of the group.

Option 2: Conversion of LCA results into environmental cost for LCC evaluation

Figure 11 - Option 2 Conversion LCA results into environmental cost for LCC evaluation flow chart

The steps of this methodology framework are the same as Option 1; except in this option, carbon and waste emission results produced from the LCA analysis are converted into carbon and waste costs. This can be based on carbon and waste price/indices that are currently available.

For carbon emission:

There are two common approaches to value cost of carbon used in project cost and benefit appraisal, i.e. social damage cost of carbon and marginal abatement cost (avoidance cost) and none of these approaches is ideal. The social damage cost of carbon reflects the value of damage caused by each additional greenhouse gases emission of carbon into the atmosphere [5]. Marginal abatement cost is the cost of reducing emissions rather than the value of the damage caused by the emissions. It is based on the cost of technological and process measures to eliminate or reduce emissions [5].




So far, there is no general consensus within the EU on a standard method of valuing carbon and an agreed ‘carbon cost’ value does not exist. This finding is supported by the 2006 EU research project HEATCO [11] (Developing Harmonised European Approach for Transport Costing and Project Assessment) which studied the current practices in Europe on climate change effects treated in transport project appraisals and assessments. The study concluded that there is no single common approach to assess the money value of climate change effects. Several countries (the Netherlands, Italy, Finland) use the damage cost approach to value the cost of carbon/CO2 emissions, whilst other countries (Austria, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland) are adopting the marginal abatement cost (avoidance cost) approach. [11]

The method of valuing carbon and its cost values is normally determined by the policies and guidelines set by individual countries. For example, the U.K government provides guidelines on the use of a U.K Government carbon valuation methodology, which applies to infrastructure investment policies and projects. The U.K. carbon valuation guidance [12] produces a schedule of non-traded carbon cost factors for the period 2008-2100, which is based on the marginal abatement cost method [13]. Figure 12 below shows an extract of U.K carbon values.

Figure 12 - U.K Non-traded carbon cost factors in GBP/tonne CO2e [12] (note: 1 unit of CO2 is equivalent to 1 unit of CO2e)

Since individual European countries have their preferred methodology of valuing carbon and setting their own carbon values and the LCAT is intended to be used in rail projects (i.e. public sector/ government projects), it would be pragmatic that the methodology and carbon values are country-specific, reflecting individual national policy and guidelines. It is recommended that users (IMs) should follow their national guidance as their first preference.

Alternatively, the IMPACT [14] (Internalisation of Transport External Cost) project estimated carbon cost data shown in Figure 13 can be used as a starting guide for evaluations. The data below are produced by taking into account cost factor values suggested by previous European research studies (ExternE [15], Watkiss [16], Stern [17], etc.).




Figure 13 – IMPACT’s recommended cost factors in Euro/tonne CO2 [14]

Due to uncertainties related to estimating cost factor values, a range of values are suggested by the literature above. It is recommended that sensitivity analysis should be carried out using the lower and upper values provided to arrive at lower and upper-bound estimates of the carbon impact.

For waste emission:

In this context, wastes are assumed as the substances and materials that have no commercial values and are not reused/ recycled but discarded to the landfill. Many of the European countries such as the U.K, the Netherlands and Sweden introduced landfill taxes on landfilling to curb waste disposal and encourage waste reduction, recycling and material recovery. For example, in the U.K. the standard landfill tax for 2012 is £56.00 per tonne [18]. This enables the cost for the waste impact to be valued using each country landfill taxes regime.

Advantages

Achieve MAINLINE objective

The economic and environmental results are provided in single monetary cost. It achieves the ideal MAINLINE objective, i.e. to quantify the environmental emissions in cost term.

Comparison between economic and environmental aspects using the same unit

Quantification of LCC cost and environmental impact using a similar monetary unit allows direct comparison between the two criteria.

Disadvantages

Carbon valuation method

So far, there is no agreed consensus about which is the best valuation method to calculate carbon cost. Each of the methods presented i.e. the social damage cost and abatement cost methods have their drawbacks.

For the social damage cost, there is uncertainty over valuation of climate change damage in which the cost is estimated on, since it is extremely difficult to value the damage precisely from a model. There is also uncertainty related to risks of catastrophic damages. The economic damages that may occur at such stage are not well understood and neither is the speed at which impacts accrue. Due to this limited knowledge, these are not completely modelled. In addition to the uncertainties in modelling the impacts, there are some impacts which are altogether excluded from current modelling, due to some of the impacts being hard to quantify,




e.g. socially contingent effects which are the cost of mass migrations from inundated countries [19]. Similarly, the abatement cost method has its drawbacks as well. The estimated values have drawback with uncertainties in predicting impacts of innovations and technologies progressing over such a long time frame [5].

Thus, there is no single standard solution or an EU wide agreed carbon cost values. Every European country generally adopts either one of the approaches above and determines their carbon price accordingly. This makes the proposal of a single method/price to be used in the LCAT impractical although carbon emission is a global impact.

Moreover, there are uncertainties associated with the carbon cost values. Therefore, the use of a single cost value in the LCAT analysis may not provide reliable results and sensitivity analysis should be carried out to produce lower and upper-bound estimates of the carbon results for evaluation.

No consensus on discounting principle

There is no agreeable and clear consensus on discounting the future environmental costs. There are two primary schools of thought. The first argues that a zero discount rate should be used to analyse environmental impacts because of ethical considerations for future generations. It means that the value for the environmental impacts is equivalent between the present and the future [19]. However, others believe environmental discount should not be zero since people generally put more weight on current value than the value in the future [19]. According to Hardisty [5], lower discount rate is generally used in social economic analysis including environmental aspects because higher discount rates effectively devalue the future. A higher discount rate means that large costs and benefits that occur in the future have very small impacts on decisions made today; this is known as “writing off the future” [5]. Thus, it is not clear-cut whether to adopt discounting to environmental costs during LCC evaluation. In general, European countries such as the U.K. have their own set of guidance on discounting environmental impacts. As an example, the U.K. government requires monetised environmental impacts such as carbon costs to be discounted to present values based on the usual discount rates that are applied to financial costs (e.g. agency and users costs). The conventional discounting technique that is applied to the financial costs is also used to discount the future environmental costs. Since there is no standard acceptable discounting practice for the environmental impacts and moreover European countries have their own guidance related to this matter, it is recommended that the discounting rule and the discount rate values are to follow country specific guidance. Furthermore, since it is important for the LCAT to be designed for flexible use, it is deemed practical to allow the discounting rule and discount rate to be user-defined to suit IMs’ own country specific guidance.

Monetisation of other environmental impacts

There is currently limited cost data related to other environmental impacts such as damage cost to biodiversity. Thus, if the LCAT tool is developed using the monetisation option, only certain environmental impacts can be confidently evaluated through monetary values.




Option 3: Conversion of LCC and LCA results into an economic and environmental score

Figure 14 – Option 3 Conversion of LCC and LCA results into an economic and environmental

score flow chart

The steps of this methodology are the same as Option 1. The key aspect of this option is to convert LCC and LCA results of the alternative options into overall economic and environmental performance scores.

After the core LCA analysis is carried out, the carbon and waste emission values are converted and aggregated into a single weighted average score through normalisation and weighting to represent an environmental performance score.

Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) is applied to calculate the overall economic and environmental performance scores. This method is both an approach and a set of techniques with the goal of providing an overall ranking of the options from the most preferred to the least preferred [10]. The purpose is to serve as an aid to thinking and decision making, but not to decide on the decision itself [10]. The scores produced reflect the overall performance of the options and the option with the most favourable score is selected. There are many forms of MCDA techniques and the selection of the most appropriate technique is based on criteria such as internal consistency and logical soundness, ease of use, transparency, realistic time and resources for analysis and ability to provide an audit trail [10]. One of the most widely used MCDA techniques for transport project appraisals is scoring and weighting [10]. In general, scale of performance is used (e.g. from 0 to 100 where 0 could represent the most favourable and 100 the least favourable performance [3]), to score the options on their economic and environmental criteria. Weights are assigned to each of the criteria to reflect their relative importance and overall weighted average scores are calculated to determine the overall economic and environmental




performance for each option. This technique is easy to use and understand, is transparent and able to provide audit trails for decision making.

Advantages

Transparent and explicit

MCDA is a transparent and explicit numerical analysis method for decision support. Thus, it can provide a good means of communication (audit trail) within decision makers group and sometimes with the external stakeholders on how the decision is reached.

Use in non-monetised impacts

It is an alternative method to quantify and assess social or environmental impacts that are difficult to be monetised or valued.

Disadvantages

Not fully achieved MAINLINE Project objective

The MCDA method does not fully achieve the MAINLINE DOW objective to quantify CO2 and other environmental impacts in monetary terms.

Achieving consensus on weights and performance score system may be difficult.

It may be difficult to achieve consensus on the weights and performance score systems used in valuing analyses outputs for decision making. Also, some IMs may find it difficult to communicate their investment decisions to their fund holder (central government) using the system since the decisions are normally made based on monetary values.




Option 4: Maintenance & renewal interventions with pre-determined environmental

impacts and performance scores

Figure 15 – Option 4 interventions with pre-determined environmental impacts and performance scores flow chart

The key aspect of Option 4 is to pre-determine the amounts of environmental impacts (carbon and waste emissions) associated with rail maintenance and renewal intervention activities, convert them to environmental performance scores and develop an inventory to contain the quantified environmental impacts and performance scores for the related intervention activities. This allows users to choose a range of intervention activities that can be developed into renewal and maintenance plans and the environmental performance scores are used with LCC results to produce an overall combined economic and environmental performance score.

Intervention activities that are typical to the renewal and maintenance of rail assets are defined. At LCA analysis stage, each intervention activity’s system is modelled and evaluated to produce environmental impact results (carbon and waste emissions). Similar to Option 3, the environmental performance scores are calculated for each intervention through normalisation and weighting. The performance scores for a range of the common interventions activities are contained in an environmental inventory database, to enable users to select the relevant interventions for project study or to aggregate them to build up maintenance and renewal plans. In addition, the environmental emission data associated with the performance scores are also contained in the inventory database to provide audit trail and transparency of emissions associated with the scores. Moreover, the generated plans can be contained in the inventory database to enable users to use the data to build other specific plans.




The interventions are a range of activities carried out to construct, maintain, repair and dispose rail assets. The main elements of the interventions include:

Materials and products used

Transportation to/from site

Equipment and plants for site works

Labour used

Energy and water consumed

Disposal materials, treatments and related transportation

The environmental performance scores are readily available to be used with LCC studies associated with the interventions/plans of alternative options. The LCC costs will be converted to economic performance scores and combined with environmental scores to produce overall performance scores using multi-criteria analysis method mentioned in Option 3.

Advantages

Direct application of environmental data and reduce time

The carbon and waste performance scores of various maintenance and renewal activities have been estimated and performance scores are given. The environmental data can be directly used by the IMs. The IMs can easily identify the level of performances of the intervention activities concerned and reduce time consumed to build up the LCA analysis model for every project studied.

Disadvantages

High resources and time-consuming exercise

Significant numbers of emissions and performance values for intervention activities have to be estimated and valuated particularly during the early period when building up sufficient data in the inventory. This can potentially be a high resource and time-consuming exercise for IMs teams.

New technologies, materials and products

Not all the activities are estimated and valuated in the inventory, particularly the interventions that involve new technologies, materials and products. These still require LCA analyses and the quantification of impacts and performance scores to be undertaken from time to time for future new technologies, materials or products.

IMs may tend to disregard environmental scores, focusing solely on LCC cost.

If the LCC costs of different alternatives are not equal with wide discrepancy in costs, IMs may tend to disregard environmental performance scores to select the alternative with optimal cost value.

7.3 Recommendation of methodology framework for LCAT

Four methodology framework options are proposed as the potential whole life economic and environmental assessment methodology for the LCAT. The important factors that are taken into account when assessing the most appropriate methodology option for the recommendation is as follows:




(a) The objective of MAINLINE DoW is to create a whole life economic and environmental assessment tool that shall quantify both economic and environmental impact costs, and the environmental costs considered shall be CO2 and other significant environmental issues. In this case, Option 2 achieves the objective in terms of quantification of environmental impact in monetary costs. However, the option is not an ideal solution to quantify all groups of environmental impacts in monetary costs since some of the environmental impacts such as damage to biodiversity is difficult to be valued. Options 3 and 4, which quantify the impacts in performance scores using multi-criteria analysis method, can be considered as better alternatives.

(b) The response from the IMs survey is an important driving factor when selecting the most appropriate option since they potentially are the users of the LCAT; the methodology chosen should account for their preferences. The option for the LCAT presenting results from the LCA and LCC analyses in monetary units is the most preferred option identified by the IMs. Option 2 is the only option that fulfils this criterion.

Based on the discussion above, it is recommended that the most appropriate methodology framework is Option 2: Conversion of LCA results into environmental cost for LCC evaluation to evaluate carbon and waste impacts. If other environmental impacts are to be included in the LCAT and they are difficult to be valued in terms of monetary costs, then conversion of environmental impacts (for LCA results) to performance scores using multi-criteria analysis is recommended as the alternative method.




7.4 References

[1] MAINLINE, D5.2 Assessment of environmental performance tools and methods, ML-D5_2-F, 2012.

[2] BS EN BEES tool (Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability) (http://www.nist.gov/el/economics/BEESSoftware.cfm).

[3] A risk-based decision making tool for sustainable bridge management thesis, N-H.Jin, University of Surrey, 2007.

[4] Life cycle costing as a contribution to sustainable construction: A common methodology, Davis Langdon, 2007.

[5] Environmental and economic sustainability, P.E.Hardisty, 2010.

[6] INNOTRACK, Guideline for LCC and RAMS Analysis (deliverables D6.1.1 -6.5.4).

[7] EN 60300-3-3 Dependability Management Life cycle costing analysis - application guide.

[8] Life cycle assessment of railways and rail transports – Application in environmental product declarations (EDP) for the Bothnia Line, Swedish Environmental Research Institute, 2010.

[9] Transport Appraisal Guidance, U.K. Department of Transport.

[10] Multi-criteria analysis manual, U.K. Department of Community and Local Government.

[11] HEATCO project - Developing Harmonised European Approaches for Transport Costing and Project Assessment deliverables 1 – 5.

[12] A brief guide to the carbon valuation methodology for UK policy appraisal, U.K. Department of Energy and Climate Change, 2011, http://www.decc.gov.uk/

[13] Carbon valuation in UK policy appraisal: A revised approach, Climate Change Economics, U.K. Department of Energy and Climate Change, 2009, http://www.decc.gov.uk/

[14] Handbook on estimation of external costs in the transport, IMPACT project, http://ec.europa.eu/transport/sustainable/doc/2008_costs_handbook.pdf

[15] Externalities of Energy (ExternE), Methodology 2005 update, edited by P. Bickel, R. Friedrich,European Comission, 2005.

[16] P. Watkiss et al. The Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) Review: Methodological Approaches for Using SCC Estimates in Policy Assessment, Final Report, UK Defra, 2005

[17] The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review, U.K. HM Treasury, 2006, http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.hmtreasury.gov.uk/sternreview_index.htm.

[18] Landfill tax guidance, U.K HM Revenue and Customs, http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/

[19] Guidance of estimating carbon values beyond 2050: An interim approach, DECC.

http://www.nist.gov/el/economics/BEESSoftware.cfm

http://www.decc.gov.uk/

http://ec.europa.eu/transport/sustainable/doc/2008_costs_handbook.pdf

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.hmtreasury.gov.uk/sternreview_index.htm

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.hmtreasury.gov.uk/sternreview_index.htm

http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/




8. Recommendations for LCAT format

The recommendations for LCAT format including the most relevant parameters and methodology framework, based on the findings of Task 5.3 are summarised below.

Overall LCAT tool

The proposed methodology framework is Option 2: Conversion of LCA results into environmental cost for LCC evaluation (see Chapter 7 for details) to evaluate carbon and waste impacts. If other environmental impacts are to be included in LCAT and they are difficult to be valued in terms of monetary costs, then conversion of environmental impacts (for LCA results) into performance scores using multi-criteria analysis is recommended as the alternative method.

In addition, one complete LCAT is highly preferred by the majority of the IMs.

The following are the recommendations to address the differences and gaps in LCC and LCA in order to ensure consistency of economic and environmental assessments within the methodology:

Model concept (difference) – Principles of cost elements of EN 60300-3-3: LCC are adapted to introduce environmental matrix. This uses the LCC principles as an over-arching framework for the LCAT with cost and environmental aspects sitting within this framework structure.

Time period/Life cycle (difference) – The time period of analysis for LCA is normally conducted for the entire life cycle of a product (cradle-grave) and the time period for LCC is variable. However, flexibility is required in the LCA part of the LCAT, allowing the environmental impacts to be studied for a specific period (e.g. maintenance, re-construction periods, etc.). This reflects the purpose of MAINLINE to assess different maintenance and renewal alternatives. Thus, it is recommended that LCC and LCA analysis to share the same time period and life cycle phases. The life cycle phases recommended are construction, operation & maintenance and end-of-life, which is consistent with the life cycle phases proposed in D5.4.

Evaluation methods, i.e. discounting vs. physical flows (difference) – Recommend LCC and LCA evaluation processes to remain independent. This allows flexibility for LCC and LCA to conduct evaluation within their own rights, allowing transparency and clear presentation of cost and environmental results and providing opportunity for compliance with current international/EU standards.

Functional unit (difference) – In MAINLINE, comparison between the LCC cost and LCA environmental outputs followed by trade-off may be required between the two aspects to select the most preferable option. Thus, an appropriate functional unit (e.g. 1km of rail section renewal) should be used for both analyses to enable the costs and environmental emissions (e.g. of the renewal intervention) to be compared in an equivalent basis.

Discounting/interest rate (gap) - It should be applied to LCC calculations for agency and user costs. Discounting is normally not applied to the conventional LCA analysis and the LCA results (i.e. amount of environmental impacts, e.g. kg of CO2e) are generally not discounted. However, discounting may be applied to the monetised value of the environmental impacts to bring the future environmental costs to present values. At present, there is no widely agreeable and clear consensus on the principle of discounting of the future environmental costs (see the Option 2 of Chapter 7 for further details). In general, European countries such as U.K. have their own set of guidance to discount




environmental impacts. As an example, the U.K. government requires monetised environmental impacts such as carbon costs to be discounted to present values based on the usual discount rates that are applied to financial costs (e.g. agency and users costs). The conventional discounting technique that is applied to the financial costs is also used to discount the future environmental costs. Since there is no standard acceptable discounting practice for the environmental impacts and moreover European countries have their own guidance related to this matter, it is recommended that the discounting rule and the discount rate values are to follow country-specific guidance. Moreover, since it is important for the LCAT to be designed for flexible use, it is deemed practical to allow the discounting rule and discount rate to be user-defined to suit IMs’ own country specific guidance.

The recommendations for the LCAT based on the IMs survey are given below:

In general, the LCAT should be based on standards, either international standards or EU standards.

The LCAT covers user cost and the most relevant user costs to be considered are user delays.

If possible, the LCAT should be able to carry out sensitivity analyses and probabilistic analyses. However, there is some concern from the IMs that the amount of data for such analyses in the short term may not be adequate.

Results from the LCC analyses should at least be presented in terms of NPV.

The LCAT should present both the cost and environmental drivers of a strategy.

Carbon/CO2 and waste are the most important environmental performance criteria that need consideration. This re-confirmed the study concluded in D5.2. Other criteria to be considered would be water pollution (surface water and groundwater).

Moreover, the relevant parameters for the LCAT are identified by the gap analysis and these are the common parameters used by the currently available LCC and LCA tools to evaluate life cycle cost, carbon emission and waste impacts. The most relevant parameters for LCAT are provided in the table below, with identified gaps and recommendations in achieving the IMs requirements.

Most relevant parameters for LCAT


Time period of analysis The durations of time period vary broadly and are specific to each maintenance and renewal intervention analysis. An asset specific guidance is recommended to help IMs to determine the appropriate time period in LCAT.

Data input method This study found that IMs are not familiar with the LCA methodology. It is recommended that a simplified format of LCA analysis should be developed for LCAT and that the input method in the LCAT needs to be transparent, flexible and easy to understand. Provision of specific guidance in the LCAT is also recommended to help IMs when carrying out the analyses.

LCC discount rate The value of discount rate varies and is country specific. Recommendation is that this is a country-specific input parameter.

LCC discounting approach

Although NPV is recommended, some IMs also need other types of outputs in LCC. If possible, consideration of these other outputs




Most relevant parameters for LCAT


(Internal Rate Return and Net Saving) is recommended in LCAT.

LCC agency, user and environmental costs

Delays are the most important user cost and should be covered in LCAT. Detailed guidance or standards on how to calculate the user costs (delays) are also needed.

LCA carbon and waste criteria

IMs strongly preferred the LCA results of carbon and waste impacts presented in monetary values. Monetary conversion functions are needed in LCAT to convert the impacts into cost values.

Whole life profile The whole life profile in LCC is identified as one of important parameters. Such output format is not normally provided in LCA tools. Therefore, it is recommended in LCAT to show such analyses outputs for costs (agency and user) and for environmental aspects (including environmental costs) separately.

Table 5 – Most relevant LCAT parameters with gaps and recommendations.




APPENDIX A – Assessment of LCC methodologies for identification of basic LCC methodology processes




BS EN 60300-3-3

Dependability Management –LCC [1]

Davis Langdon, Life Cycle Costing as Contribution to Sustainable Construction Common Methodology [2]

U.S.A NIST LCC tool Bridge

LCC [3]

U.S.A Federal Energy

Management Program - LCC Manual Guideline [4]

INNOTRACK Report WP6.2.4 –Simplified LCC Analysis

Flow used in the Project [5]

Main steps in the typical

LCC methodology framework

Life cycle costing plan:

- Define the analysis objectives. - Define the scope of the

analysis. - Identify any underlying

conditions, assumptions, limitations and constraints (such as minimum product performance, availability and cost limit) which might restrict options to be evaluated.

- Identify alternative courses of actions to be evaluated.

Identification of: - Main purpose of the LCC

analysis

- The initial scope of analysis. - Extent to which sustainability

analysis relates to LCC.

- Period of analysis and method of evaluation.

- Need for risk/uncertainty and sensitivity analysis.

- Project and asset requirements (e.g. project constraints, performance & quality requirements, budget and timescales).

Define project objective and minimum performance requirements.

Define the project and state the objective

Note: The objective of the INNOTRACK project is to reduce LCC cost of a conventional line by implementing new innovative technologies.

Define project objective and scope.

Identify options to be included and cost items to be considered.

Identify alternatives to achieve the objective (each alternative must satisfy the minimum performance requirements).

Identify feasible alternatives

Definition of innovations: - Identify innovations to be

assessed and current reference solution for comparison.

- Define the impact of innovations compared to current solution.

Identify alternative options.

Establish the basic assumptions for the analysis (e.g. base year, study period and discount rate, traffic forecast).

Establish common assumptions and parameters.

Identification of the input parameters involved by defining the technical boundary condition using ‘In/Out’ Frame method.

Establish analysis assumptions and parameters




BS EN 60300-3-3

Dependability Management –LCC [1]

Davis Langdon, Life Cycle Costing as Contribution to Sustainable Construction Common Methodology [2]

U.S.A NIST LCC tool Bridge

LCC [3]

U.S.A Federal Energy

Management Program - LCC Manual Guideline [4]

INNOTRACK Report WP6.2.4 –Simplified LCC Analysis

Flow used in the Project [5]

Main steps in the typical

LCC methodology framework

LCC model development and application: - Obtain data for all the

basic cost elements in the LCC model for all product options, subsystems and support option combinations.

Assemble cost and time based data to be used in the LCC analysis. Verify values of financial parameters and period of analysis

Identify, estimate and determine the timing of all relevant costs.

Estimate times of occurrence for each alternative and cost of each alternative.

Building LCC models: - Modular Product

Breakdown System (PBS) and Cost Breakdown System (CBS) to be built for the study.

- RAM parameters to be quantified

- Build cost database (general costs, average reference costs, ‘best practice’ cost).

Build LCC model and assemble cost and time based data. Based on BS EN 60300-3-3, the modelling involves: - Cost breakdown structure

- Product/work breakdown structure

- Selection of cost categories

- Selection of cost elements

- Cost estimations

LCC model application:

- Perform LCC analysis of product operating scenarios.

Perform required economic evaluation.

Compute LCC for each alternative.

Discount future cost to NPV and compute LCC analysis.

Calculation of results. Perform LCC evaluation.

- Discounting future costs to NPV.

- Compute discounted NPV costs for each alternative option.


- Report analysis to identify optimum scenarios.

- Examine LCC model input/output to determine cost drivers.

- Quantify any differences in product performance, availability and other constraints between options.

Categorise and summarise outputs to logical groupings.

Interpret and present initial results in required format. Need for further iteration of LCC exercise. Interpret and present final result in required format and final report.

Compare the alternatives LCC for each set of assumptions. Select the best alternative (the lowest LCC).

Compare LCC results for each alternative, to select the most economical alternative

LCC results and interpretation. - Determine the optimum/

best alternative. - Identify key cost drivers.


- Conduct sensitivity analysis

If required, carry out detailed risk/uncertainty analysis (such as using monte-carlo simulation) and sensitivity analysis, and results interpretation.

Perform sensitivity analysis by re-computing LCC cost for each alternative using different assumptions about data input.

Assess uncertainty of input data using sensitivity analysis and probabilistic analysis.

Carry out sensitivity analysis and probabilistic analysis.

Perform sensitivity analysis and uncertainty (probabilistic) analysis.




References

[1] BS EN 60300-3-3 Dependability Management – Application Guide LCC.

[2] Life Cycle Costing as Contribution to Sustainable Construction Common Methodology, Davis Langdon.

[3] BridgeLCC 2.0 manual, NIST GCR 03-85, www.nist.gov/el/economics/bridgelcc.cfm

[4] Life cycle costing manual for Federal Energy Management program handbook135, NIST, 1995.

[5] INNOTRACK, Guideline for LCC and RAMS Analysis (deliverables D6.1.1 – 6.5.4).




APPENDIX B – Brief description of the EN ISO 14040 LCA methodology framework

Figure B1 - EN ISO 14040 Life Cycle Assessment Framework [1]

Brief description of BS EN 14040 series LCA methodology framework [2, 3] (a) Definition of goal and scope

Goal - intended application, reason to carry out study, intended audience and whether the results are to be used for comparative assertion and disclose to public.

Scope - produce system, function, functional unit, system boundary, LCIA methodology and types of impacts, types and sources of data, data quality requirement etc.

(b) Inventory Analysis

Inventory analysis phase involves data collection and quantification of all relevant inputs and outputs of a product system in study. It involves the following activities:

-Data collection, calculation and validation -Relating data to unit process and functional unit - Data aggregation -Refining the system boundary (as appropriate) with sensitivity analysis. -Production of inventory analysis with LCI results.

(c) Impact Assessment

The impact assessment phase involves the following activities:




Example

Amount of greenhouse gases per functional unit (e.g.CO2, CH4 and etc. in

kg/functional unit)

Climate change (global warming) impact

Greenhouse gases emission (CO2, CH4 and etc.) assigned to the global

warming.

kg CO2 equivalent for functional unit Adverse effects to coral reef, forest and crops.

- The selection of impact categories, category indicators and characterisation models.

- Classification: the LCI results produced from the inventory analysis phase are assigned to the relevant impact categories.

- Characterisation: category indicator results are calculated by converting the LCI results to a common unit and aggregating the converted results within the same impact category. The outcome of the calculation is a numerical indicator result.

The LCIA phase is summarised by the following figure B2 below.

Figure B2 - ISO 14044 Life Cycle Impact Assessment Concept [3]

Since the objective of MAINLINE is to assess carbon emission and other significant environmental impacts, the LCA analysis of this project will assess up to the environmental relevance category indicators, for global warming and waste impacts. Assessment of the endpoint categories is not required.

(d) Interpretation

The life cycle interpretation phase involves the following activities: - Identification of significant issues. - Evaluation by completeness check, sensitivity check, consistency check and other

checks. - Conclusion, limitation and recommendations.




References

[1] Life cycle costing as a contribution to sustainable construction: a common methodology, Davis Langdon, 2007.

[2] EN ISO14040:2006 Environmental management: life cycle assessment -principles and framework

[3] EN ISO14044:2006 Environmental management: life cycle assessment - requirements and guidelines

deliverable 5.3: recommendations for format of a life ...the overall aim of wp5 is to create a life...

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