Technical and Economic Valuation of Healthcare Building Upgrade

The construction cost for a building can be estimated through a synthetic-comparative approach, useful for the determination of the budget when a detailed project is not yet available. Budget determination can refer to a multi-year plan for the modernization of a built asset, its seismic retrofit, or energy-performance improvement. Based on Jevons’s law of indifference, stating that two identical goods—in a given market and in a given moment—have an identical value, this research examines applying it to inhomogeneous and complex assets, in this case healthcare facilities. Once costs of interventions, already performed on existing assets, are known, it is possible to compare the value of assets with similar features that express modernization or adjustment needs for an adequate building upgrade.