We must remember that Whole Life Costing is an approach to support excellent decision making. There are several significant benefits to taking such an approach: 

1. Better Planning – Whole Life Costing will add (where possible) a greater level of detail to planning within The University. It will help to provide internal customers and project managers with relevant information to help with effective planning
2. Transparent Decision Making – a commitment to WLC will provide a framework that can be used to support business decisions. If WLC is supported across The University, it can help to develop a greater shared understanding of how and why difficult planning and budget decisions are being made
3. Realistic Long-Term Budgeting –any ambitious long-term capital programme will include financial implications in terms of revenue costs for service and maximising the value delivered by the building.  A commitment to WLC will provide a much better understanding of these financial implications to support integrated and long-term financial planning.

An alternative way of looking at this is how we develop the resilience of our decision-making process. This is illustrated below as the difference between basic and transformational decision making.