Workshop 09: Integrating Life Cycle Assessment and Cost Engineering for Informed Sustainable Decision-Making

Main Presenter: Mathilda Kurz

Co-Authors:Felix M. Piontek

Workshop Format: Group discussion; Break-out groups

Organizations increasingly face the challenge of considering need to balance environmental performance with economic feasibility. While Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) provides insight into environmental impacts, and cost-related perspectives shape economic feasibility, both are often applied in isolation.

This 2-hour workshop explores how LCA and cost-related perspectives can be better aligned to support informed and decision-relevant sustainability assessments. Drawing on insights from a master’s thesis conducted at Carl Zeiss AG and opens the research to a broader audience.

The first part of the workshop introduces common patterns observed across organizations, including differences in organizational embedding, data availability, and methodological application of LCA and cost engineering.

The second part focuses on integration: Key challenges—such as data uncertainty, methodological alignment, and organizational barriers—will be discussed, allowing participants to critically reflect on limitations and discuss how these can be addressed in practice.

Finally, the workshop will emphasize practical implementation. The goal is to collect best practices and experiences from different fields and industries to allow for an integration into the master thesis and at ZEISS as well as for the participants to take to their respective fields, companies and institutions.

By fostering dialogue between academia, industry and other sectors, the workshop seeks to support the development of more sustainable, cost-efficient, and informed decisions in product development, bridging the gap between environmental assessment and economic evaluation.

Keywords: Accounting, LCA, cost

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