Life cycle costing
Life cycle costing is a method that evaluates relevant costs across acquisition, operation, maintenance, and end-of-life stages. Applying Life cycle costing requires a stated affected people, rights, value-chain tier, geography, remedy, and distribution of benefits or harms. Those choices determine how Life cycle costing can be compared or acted upon.
In simple terms
In practical use, Life cycle costing is a method that evaluates relevant costs across acquisition, operation, maintenance, and end-of-life stages. For Life cycle costing, the selected inputs, ordered steps, decision rule, assumptions, and limitations form part of the result within a declared affected people, rights, value-chain tier, geography, remedy, and distribution of benefits or harms. Life cycle costing connects with Sustainable procurement and Supply chain due diligence; each can affect its application without sharing its definition. The candidate link between Life cycle costing and Migrant worker remains a separate expansion question supported here by European Commission.
Why it matters
Life cycle costing matters because decisions about it determine which workers or communities are visible, what rights or harms are assessed, and where prevention or remedy is assigned. A defensible use of Life cycle costing therefore exposes its boundary, method, evidence, responsible actor, and uncertainty before a conclusion is accepted. That discipline keeps Sustainable procurement and Supply chain due diligence from being treated as proof of Life cycle costing when their criteria, scope, or results differ.
Example
A procurement and human-rights team evaluates Life cycle costing for a defined decision and records the relevant affected people, rights, value-chain tier, geography, remedy, and distribution of benefits or harms. For Life cycle costing, the team uses cited material from European Commission to structure the analysis and follow its ordered steps, documenting the period, data, assumptions, and comparison with Sustainable procurement. It treats Supply chain due diligence and Migrant worker as separate questions rather than proxies for Life cycle costing.
How it differs
Life cycle assessment
Life cycle costing evaluates monetary costs over time, whereas Life cycle assessment evaluates environmental inputs, outputs, and potential impacts. The methods can support one decision but use different measures and should report results separately.