The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of a large, highly diversified company. “Ten years ago our company had two new office buildings constructed as regional headquarters for two regions. The buildings were erected by different construction companies-Alpha and Zeta. Although the tw

According to a vice president’s memo,the company has a new buliding plan and it is going to choose one construction company between Alpha and Zeta. The vice president thinks Zeta is better for lower maintenance expenses, lower energy consumption and stable workforce. However, there are some questions should be figure out before making the decision. Does maintenance fee and energy consumption are relevant to construction process?Does Zeta’s total expenses are lower than Alpha’s? Is it necessary that little employee turnover means higher working effciency?
To begin with, we need to know more about the details of capacity of two buildings to decide if there are connections between maintenance fee and construction process. For example, if there are fewer people who worked in the building that was built by Zeta than the building that was built by Alpha, electricity and water usage should be less than Alpha’s building. In addition, we need to
investigate decorations of two buildings. For example, Zeta’s building may use expensive furnitures in order to save energy while Alpha does not. Besides,maybe it is a special situation that Zeta’s maintenance fee was lower last year. We should compare all maintenance fee for ten years.
In addition, we also need to know all costs of two buildings and compare them. For example, even though Zeta’s building needs lower maintenance expenses, their construction fee were 30 percent higher than Zeta. Maybe construction fee is the largest proportion of a building, maintenance expenses are less than the amount of saved construction bills. In this case, it is cheaper to choose Alpha.
Finally, it is important to know whether the work efficiency of two companies. A stable workforce does not mean they did better.
We should look through and compare all projects which are done by two companies. For example, maybe Zeta company has more older employees and it is difficult for them to find other construction jobs, while Alpha recruits young people every year and they have better work performances. In this situation, Alpha can finish the project faster than Zeta. Or maybe Zeta’s projects are not preformed well except the last office building which had identical floor plans with Alpha.
In conclusion , we do not know the recommendation would be better and whether the arguement is reasonable until we gather more information to answer the questions above.