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Traditionally, early-stage investment decisions on buildings purely based initial capital costs and simply ignored running costs and total lifecycle cost. This was basically due to the absence of estimating models that yield running costs at the early design stage. Often, when the design of a building, which is responsible for 10–15% of its total cost, is completed, 80% of the total cost is committed. This study aims to develop a building characteristic-based model, which is an early-stage determinant of running costs of buildings, to predict the running costs of commercial buildings.

A desk study was carried out to collect running costs data and building characteristics of 35 commercial buildings in Sri Lanka. A Pareto analysis, bivariate correlation analysis and hedonic regression modelling were performed on collected data.

According to Pareto analysis, utilities, services, admin work and cleaning are four main cost constituents, responsible for 80% of running costs, which can be represented by highly correlated building characteristics of building height, number of floors and size. Approximately 94% of the variance in annual running costs/sq. m is expressed by variables of number of floors, net floor area and working hours/day together with a mean prediction accuracy of 2.89%.

The study has utilised a sample of 35 commercial buildings due to non-availability and difficulty in accessing running cost data.

Early-stage supportive running costs estimation model proposed by the study would enable construction professionals to benchmark the running costs and thereby optimise the building design. The developed hedonic model illustrated the variance of running costs concerning the changes in characteristics of a building.

Life cycle assessment (LCA) has considerably contributed to increasing the environmental friendliness of buildings in developed countries. However, it is hard to find evidence on the application of LCA for buildings in developing countries; particularly, Sri Lanka. There is a lack of research to compare the status of LCA of buildings in developed countries vs developing countries. In this context, the purpose of this study aims to examine the status of LCA implementation for buildings between developed countries and Sri Lanka, a developing country.

The exploratory research was adapted, and in-depth interviews were held with LCA professionals from Sri Lanka and developed countries, respectively.

Relatively less attention has been paid to the implementation of LCA for buildings in Sri Lanka compared to the developed countries due to the time and effort required to collect life cycle inventory data and limited stakeholder understanding of the LCA. Hence, this study proposed improvements, including the development of LCA databases containing region-specific data and conducting programmes to raise stakeholders' awareness to address the gaps in Sri Lanka.

The identified LCA implementation process for buildings could be used as a guide for first-time LCA users, and it equally makes a valued reference for experienced practitioners.

A limited number of the studies formulate a comparison between the LCA for building in developed countries and developing countries. This research attempts to address this knowledge gap.