Life-cycle costing
68.—(1) Life-cycle costing must, to the extent relevant, cover part or all of the following costs over the life cycle of a product, service or works—
(a)costs, borne by the contracting authority or other users, such as—
(i)costs relating to acquisition;
(ii)costs of use, such as consumption of energy and other resources;
(iii)maintenance costs;
(iv)end of life costs, such as collection and recycling costs; and
(b)costs imputed to environmental externalities linked to the product, service or works during its life cycle, provided their monetary value can be determined and verified.
(2) The costs mentioned in paragraph (1)(b) may include the cost of emissions of greenhouse gases and of other pollutant emissions and other climate change mitigation costs.
(3) The method used for the assessment of costs imputed to environmental externalities must fulfil all of the following conditions—
(a)it is based on objectively verifiable and non-discriminatory criteria and, in particular, where it has not been established for repeated or continuous application, it must not unduly favour or disadvantage certain economic operators;
(b)it is accessible to all interested parties;
(c)the data required can be provided with reasonable effort by normally diligent economic operators, including economic operators from third countries party to the GPA or other international agreements by which the EU is bound.
(4) Where a contracting authority assesses costs using a life-cycle costing approach, the authority must indicate in the procurement documents—
(a)the data to be provided by the tenderers; and
(b)the method which the contracting authority will use to determine the life-cycle costs on the basis of those data.
(5) Whenever a common method for the calculation of life-cycle costs has been made mandatory by a legislative act of the EU, that common method must be applied for the assessment of life-cycle costs.
(6) Legislative acts referred to in paragraph (5) include those set out in Annex XIII to the Directive as amended from time to time.