Life-Cycle Cost Analysis Software

Thank you for your interest in the FHWA's pavement design life-cycle cost analysis software product. This software provides a tool to perform LCCA for pavement selection in accordance with FHWA best practice methods. These best practices are outlined in the FHWA's "Life-Cycle Cost Analysis Primer," and the software methodology is fully documented in the FHWA's "Life-Cycle Cost Analysis in Pavement Design," publication number FHWA-SA-98-079. Both of these documents are available in electronic format on the FHWA's LCCA website (http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/asstmgmt/lcca.cfm) or by request for hardcopy.

The version currently in production is Realcost 2.2. We recently incorporated many upgrade requests submitted by various agencies into a beta version RealCost 2.5.

The following compressed files contain the setup programs for the described versions of RealCost. These products are in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets with additional Visual Basic for Applications code to provide the graphic user interface. To use this software, you must have MS Excel 2000, or a more recent version. To install this product to your computer:

1. Save the zip file to your hard drive
   • Version 2.2 (.zip, 2 mb)
   • Version 2.5 (.zip, 8 mb)
2. Unzip the file
3. Run the resulting file, LCCA Setup.exe
4. Additionally, ensure that MS Excel macro security is set to medium or low - you must choose to allow macros to run for this product to perform properly.

• User's Manual