Standardising decision-making enables companies to save money. A standardised process allows more junior staff to make decisions without needing to consult a more senior member of staff. Why might a more senior member of staff be required? Because subjective decisions require experience, perspective, and judgement, all of which take time to develop. It is therefore natural for a company seeking to increase profitability to look towards standardising its decision-making processes.
However, we can also recognise the limitations of this approach. We encounter them when the service provider we rely on can’t make an exception in our case because their system won’t permit it, even though all that’s required is for someone to use judgement and say, ‘this is acceptable.’
Our aim in construction should be to build far less that is new and to work much more with what already exists. Building new structures lends itself well to standardised processes. Working with existing structures is a much subtler art, requiring observation, analysis, and careful decision-making. Standardised decision-making will become significantly harder, and there will be no shortcut to careful judgement.
