Service Life Assessment of Buildings - a New Beginning

Assessment of service life of buildings has for several decades been a theme of interest for researchers and building practitioners internationally, e.g. as evidenced by CIB Committee W080. Service life assessment has received renewed interest recently, being a crucial parameter in assessing the sustainability of structures. Furthermore, the increased interest in circular construction and “design for disassembly” principles call for a revisit of how service life is assessed. A new project wishes to establish a common definition and understanding of the concept of service life of buildings and their components in a Danish context. The project strives to establish a service life model for relevant types of buildings and building components, widely accepted in the Danish building sector, based on the most common classification systems and with a reasonable measure of safety. The vision is to be able to ensure quality and robustness of the built environment to reduce the use of resources and to minimize environmental and economic consequences. A closer understanding and prediction of “real” service life of buildings is needed, i.e. also considering non-technical reasons for end of service life, by uncovering and modelling reasons why buildings or parts of buildings are preserved or demolished. The project aims to move from a deterministic to a stochastic approach concerning service life data. The goal is to establish evidence-based key figures for reference service life, maintenance needs, replacement intervals, etc., based on register data and generated, new data with a view to optimizing both the environmental impact and the overall economy of a building. Although the project will involve as many stakeholders of the Danish building sector as possible, it should also be well founded in international development and cooperation in its field. It is therefore of great interest to present and discuss the new project with participants of CESBP 2022.