ABSTRACT
The world-wide movement to improve and publicize the service life of building components is a welcome move to plan and design structures based on life-cycle costing. This paper addresses the difficulty of coordinating the expected service life of individual materials with their actual service life when they are combined into assemblies. We advocate design and construction that make proper use of durability, and that consider accessibility a major factor in maintaining and replacing components. The goal is to attain physical and functional obsolescence of maximum economy and satisfaction of use.
