INTRODUCTION

Assets and projects are either revenue generated or cost disbursements. For the case of revenue generated the main objective is to maximize profit. While for the assets or projects that require cost disbursements, the aim is to minimize the expenses. Both of these cases require either revenue and cost related evaluations or only cost expenses evaluations. The common approach is to evaluate the CAPEX, OPEX and revenue of the assets or projects during the asset utilizations or project durations. One of the most important criteria for the evaluations is the choice of the period of evaluations. It is common practice to select the utilization period of the assets for the case of assets that involve only cost disbursements. For the case of the projects the normal approach is to use project durations for the period of evaluations.  These approaches do not cover the whole spectrum of the revenues and costs involved. A more comprehensive approach is to adopt life cycle costing (LCC). The LCC involved two main components. The acquisition and sustaining costs. The acquisition costs in turn covers R&D cost, non-recurring cost and recurring cost. The sustaining cost consists of scheduled and unscheduled cost, facility usage cost and disposal cost. Each of the above cost has five related cost elements such as for R&D cost, the cost elements consist of program management, R&D and advance R&D, engineering design, equipment development and test and engineering data. For revenue generated assets and projects, the LCC are based on the NPV of the revenues and costs for the whole assets/projects life. While cost expenses assets and projects only involved the NPV evaluations of the cost disbursements for the whole life of the assets/projects.