Journals Proceedings

Abstract

The construction industry is one of the ever growing and leading sectors, which contributes to the economic growth of any nation. One of the current challenges in this industry is to ensure compliance with the norms and standards pertaining to the construction process, building quality, performance, and most remarkably, the environmental impact. The materials used in construction have a crucial role in meeting the above requirements, and in line with this, substantial researches are in progress, in implementing scientific techniques for the selection of construction materials. Material selection is often influenced by budget constraints, local availability, and lack of technical expertise/advice. Some materials that are attractive in terms of initial cost, can have adverse effects on quality, reliability and performance, and even a catastrophic impact on the environment, during the life span of the building. So the present article tries to convince the importance of selecting material based on Life Cycle Costing (LCC), which performs the cradle-to-grave assessment of a building, at the design stage itself. The existing methods of material selection, and the introduction of LCC with details of each steps involved, and concluding remarks, are presented on the basis of review of the related literature.