Development of Whole Life Cost Model for Road Tunnels

Abstract

Construction of infrastructure involve large capital investments along with future costs to operate and maintain these assets. Decision making in planning and design of roads will impact the need of future operation and maintenance activities. The primary decision making process in civil engineering construction often considers only the construction costs; but in case of road tunnels the maintenance and lightning costs also plays a major role and cause a major cash flow. A road tunnel has construction cost as major capital cost component while the annual cost components include electricity cost, lightning equipment cost, pavement repair cost, cost incurred in cleaning and drainage etc. Therefore, there is a great need to plan the construction, operational and maintenance costs to attain a cheapest solution possible. For successful execution of whole life costing in road planning, design and administration, various conditions are needed to be understood. In this thesis the application of whole life costing on a road tunnel has been examined. The main case selected was a road tunnel 2.8 km long situated at Aut in Chandigarh-Manali national highway. This case was examined to identify the most sensitive parameter, by using sensitivity analysis and net present value method, that affect the total cost of the tunnel to a great extent.