The Capital Load of the Building Enclosure System Relative to Other Systems and Its Impact on the Total Cost of Ownership of Condo Buildings in BC

Drawing upon a database of 1651 buildings, this paper demonstrates that the costs associated with the long-range preservation and renewal of components of the building enclosure system collectively have the highest financial impact on the aggregated capital costs (capital load) of all building systems over a 30-year planning horizon. This skewness is significant in its materiality and continues at most life stages and for different classes of MURBs.

In advancing principles toward the development of an asset management strategy, which can be tailored specifically to the asset register of each building, the capital load is further decomposed into a capital consumption index that ranks each asset based on its relative impact on the capital load. The statistics and methodology in this paper contribute towards a compelling business case for prioritized maintenance of the highly integrated systems of buildings in order to preserve the financial stability of the owners’ investment.

This paper was presented at ICBEST 2014.