Indicators for functional service life of building structures

The Estimated Service Life, ESL, is of a major influence in many building assessments. The comparison and optimization of design alternatives depend on the accuracy of this ESL. More and more the Functional Service Life rather than the Technical Service Life is decisive in how long a building can be used. It is expected that the Functional Service Life is influenced by the ability of the building to accommodate changes to (parts of) the building during its Service Life. Flexibility is here seen as a property of the building that represents the building’s ability to change and adapt. A method to quantify and score Structural Flexibility is applied to two groups of buildings, in order to find a possible relation between Structural Flexibility and the Service Life of a building. The first results of this test indicate that it is possible to assess buildings on Structural Flexibility and indicate that there is a relation of this property with the survival probability of buildings. However, the used methodology to assess structural Flexibility needs further development.