Building Economics: Theory and Practice

1 Methods of Economic Evaluation.- 1. Building Economics at a Glance.- 2. Life-Cycle Cost (LCC).- 3. Net Benefit (NB) and Net Savings (NS).- 4. Benefit-to-Cost Ratio (BCR) and Savings-to-Investment Ratio (SIR).- 5. Internal Rate of Return (IRR).- 6. Overall Rate of Return (ORR).- 7. Payback (PB).- 2 What You Need to Know to Apply the Methods.- 8. Adjusting Dollar Amounts for Time of Occurrence.- 9. Treatment of Price Changes.- 10. Setting the Study Period.- 11. Selecting a Discount Rate or MARR.- 12. Estimating Costs and Benefits.- 13. Accounting for Taxes and Financing.- 3 Techniques for Treating Uncertainty and Risk.- 14. Risk Exposure and Risk Attitude.- 15. Conservative Estimating, Breakeven Analysis, and Sensitivity Analysis.- 16. Risk-Adjusted Discount Rate and Certainty Equivalent Techniques.- 17. Decision Analysis, Simulation, and Other Techniques.- 18. Selecting the Best Technique.- 4 Applications of Economic Evaluation Methods and Risk Analysis Techniques.- 19. Selection of Building Designs and Building Components.- 20. Decision to Accept or Reject a Project.- 21. Decisions on Building Location.- 22. Lease or Buy Decisions.- 23. Economic Size of Building Components.- 24. Allocating Limited Budgets Among Competing Projects.- 25. Decisions on Timing of Equipment Replacements.- 26. Selecting Combinations of Interdependent Systems.- Appendixes.- A. Glossary.- B. Worksheets and Supporting Reference Tables for Computing Life-Cycle Costs, Net Savings, Savings-to-Investment Ratio, and Payback.- C. Graphs for Converting SPB to DPB.- D. Computer Programs.- E. Derivation of a Utility Function.- F. Guide to Published Sources of Data.- G. Discount Factor Tables.- Subject.