The life-costs of a building represent the total cost of creating and maintaining it over a specified time horizon. Terminology commonly used to describe this total cost approach also include life cycle cost, recurrent cost, costs-in-use, operational cost, running cost, ultimate cost, terotechnology and occupancy cost. The variety of terminology reflects the different approaches and definitions associated with this area. However, many of these terms are too specialized or vague to adequately describe the total cost approach and debate regularly occurs over the correct definitions for these terms.