Real-Life Decision Making
You are a construction manager running your own firm in a large city. You have recently been awarded an assignment to build an office tower. This is an important assignment and you want to do a good job.
You've completed the final blueprints, subcontracted all the work and are ready to start work on the project. One of the first steps is to prepare the formwork for the concrete.
The formwork consists of wooden or steel walls that act to keep the concrete in place after it has first been poured. The concrete is poured between these walls, and when it has fully hardened, the formwork is removed.
In order to save time, you decide the formwork should be higher than usual. This will allow the crew to pour the concrete into the formwork in one lift. On Friday afternoon, the foreman of the construction crew tells you that the formwork is completed and they will start pouring the concrete on Monday.
Early Sunday morning, a violent windstorm blows through the city. This particular storm has a wind speed that meteorologists predict only happens, on average, once every 30 years. When you arrive at work Monday morning, you discover that the wind blew down the formwork. It will have to be rebuilt.
While you're upset at the setback, you're also relieved the accident happened on the weekend, when the construction site was deserted. No one was hurt, and insurance will cover the cost of rebuilding the formwork.
Your task now is to decide how to rebuild the forms with the shortest loss of time possible. The most obvious solution is to rebuild the forms to their original height. After all, the windstorm was a freak occurrence. And it's not as if the forms are a permanent fixture. They are just a temporary structure to allow the workers to pour in the concrete.
On the other hand, there is the workers' safety to consider. What if a similar storm does develop, and at a time when the construction crew are on the site?
What do you do?