After Construction: What a Building Really Costs

Property is usually assessed by its price per square metre, location, architecture and construction quality. But once the keys have been handed over, a building continues to cost money for decades: heating and cooling, water, maintenance of building systems, repairs and equipment replacement of equipment.

Energy Efficiency, Operating Costs and a New Approach to Assessing Property Quality

The scale of these costs is largely determined long before people move in, at the concept and design stage. The shape of the building, glazing, materials, ventilation and building systems all affect how many resources the property will consume and how much it will cost to operate.

The cost of construction therefore accounts for only part of a building’s true cost.

We previously explored in detail the economics of green building and how sustainability affects property value:

When Ecology Becomes EconomicsOn 2 September, as part of Aquatherm Almaty, HD magazine held a panel discussion bringing together representatives of the public sector, architects, urban planners, engineers, and experts in green construction and finance. The central question was how to turn individual environmental solutions into a system with measurable impact, clear costs and a viable financing mechanism.mag.humodoc.com

Buildings in the Country's Energy Balance

The scale becomes clearer at the national level. According to the Bureau of National Statistics, in 2025 the residential sector was Kazakhstan’s largest sector of final energy consumption, accounting for 34.4%, or around 16.7 million tonnes of oil equivalent. A year earlier, its share was 36.5%.

Kazakhstan’s housing stock reached 434.3 million square metre at the end of 2024. Every new residential complex, office, shopping centre, school or hospital adds another consumer of energy and water for decades to come.

A significant share of its future consumption is determined before construction even begins.

Efficiency Starts with Design

The building’s siting and form, envelope, glazing area, lighting, ventilation and building systems are determined at the early stages of a project. Once construction is complete, many of these decisions are difficult and expensive to change.

Energy efficiency is therefore built into the project alongside architecture and engineering. At the concept stage, the project team can already assess how many resources the building will require in operation and which solutions can help reduce that consumption.

This makes future operating costs one of the parameters considered in the design.

A Building Has a Construction Cost and an Operating Cost

In professional practice, the capital costs of creating an asset are referred to as CAPEX. This is the cost of designing and constructing a building up to its commissioning.

Then comes OPEX, or operating expenditure: heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting, water, maintenance of building systems, repairs and equipment replacement.

The difference is fundamental. A decision that saves money during construction may increase the owner’s costs over the following twenty or thirty years.

That is why projects are assessed in terms of life-cycle cost. This combines the initial investment with future operating and maintenance costs, making it possible to compare design solutions based on their long-term performance.

First the Calculations, Then the Building in Operation

Before construction begins, energy modelling makes it possible to estimate a building’s expected energy consumption and assess how architectural and engineering decisions affect it.

But a calculation does not mean that the completed building will actually perform as modelled.

Once the building systems have been installed, they need to be tested and adjusted under real operating conditions. In professional practice, this process is known as commissioning. It involves checking the operation of heating, ventilation, air conditioning, lighting and building management systems.

Once the building is operational, its calculated performance can be compared with reality. This is done using actual performance indicators, or KPIs: how much energy the building consumes per square metre per year, how much water it uses, what its operational emissions are, and whether the building systems are performing in line with the design model.

This shows how efficiently the building is actually performing in operation.

What Does a 'Green Building' Really Mean?

A green façade, a green roof or solar panels alone do not determine whether a building is sustainable. What matters is how the entire system performs: energy and water consumption, materials, indoor air quality and microclimate, waste management, adaptation to climate change, and people's health and comfort.

At city level, the same systems-based principle underpins blue-green infrastructure, where buildings, water, green spaces and engineering networks are treated as parts of a single system.

We have written about this before:

Green Building: An Investment in TomorrowGreen building is gradually ceasing to be a purely environmental concern. For the property market, the question today is framed differently: how much does it cost to make a building sustainable, and how much can it save or earn over years of operation? Energy efficiency, operating costs, comfort, market appeal, access to financing and the preservation of asset value are all becoming part of a single economic model.mag.humodoc.com

The sequence of decisions also matters. First, architecture and engineering should reduce the building’s energy demand. Only then should consumption management be optimised and renewable energy sources introduced where technically and economically viable.

As a result, the building uses fewer resources, while its building systems and energy consumption can be managed more effectively. This creates the kind of energy hub within the city that is increasingly being discussed in relation to modern property.

Energy Efficiency Affects Property Quality

Take two buildings of the same size in comparable locations. One requires more energy, water, maintenance and expenditure on building systems every year. The other uses fewer resources, with its operational performance matching the design calculations.

For an owner, these are two properties of different quality.

Future operating costs, the condition of building systems, resource consumption and the scale of modernisation the building will require in ten or twenty years all matter.

That is why a building’s life cycle needs to be considered before construction begins: efficiency targets should be incorporated into the concept, future costs calculated, energy modelling carried out, building systems tested after installation, and the design figures subsequently compared with actual operational data.

How to Verify a Building’s Performance

Environmental certification makes it possible to verify a property’s stated characteristics against an established set of indicators.

In Kazakhstan, the national OMIR environmental assessment system is used for buildings. Energy accounts for 35% of overall assessment. Materials, water, health, environmental impact, transport and infrastructure, building management and other parameters are also taken into account.

Certification in this case records measurable characteristics of a building and makes it possible to assess its sustainability across a range of indicators.

The Life Cycle Begins After Completion

For a construction project, commissioning marks the completion of a major stage. For the building itself, decades of operation still lie ahead.

Every month, the project’s design decisions are reflected in energy and water consumption, utility and operating costs, and equipment performance. Over time, repairs and modernisation are added to the equation.

The price per square metre at the time of purchase therefore provides only part of the picture when it comes to property quality. The other part is how much that square metre will cost over the course of its life. Energy efficiency directly affects this cost and is becoming one of the indicators of property quality.

This article was produced in partnership with Aquatherm.