A methodology to investigate the challenges and strategies for improving life cycle cost (LCC) practice in the Malaysian urban renewal

Malaysia began to look into urban renewal in 2015, and subsequently, in 2020, the government planned to establish the Urban Renewal Act (URA), aimed at redeveloping decayed buildings over 30 years old, notably in public housing. Many commentators emphasised the paramount importance of financial sustainability in urban redevelopment. Hence, there is increasing demand to adopt life cycle cost (LCC) practice in urban renewal, an economic assessment technique that provides stakeholders and cost estimators with valuable total cost information, enabling more accurate forecasts of renewal and future costs, resulting in better planning for maintenance, operation and replacement throughout the urban renewal service life. Nevertheless, the adoption of LCC in the Malaysian urban renewal is still at a rudimentary stage, with a need to improve the quality of input data used. Therefore, this study presents a proposed methodology to investigate the challenges in managing and optimising the life cycle cost in urban renewal projects as well as the appropriate strategies that can be recommended to improve the LCC practice in the Malaysian urban renewal projects. The methodology is designed with a qualitative research strategy that incorporates a semi-structured interview approach to interview respondents who have established knowledge, skills or experience in urban renewal and cost estimation. The study is expected to add value to the improvement of LCC practices in the urban renewal projects in Malaysia, in alignment with the Construction Industry Transformation Programme (CITP) and the upcoming policy of the Urban Renewal Act (URA).