Building Decisions

Decision-making is critical. Leaders make decisions daily, often hyper-focusing on cost at the expense of value for society and with negative impacts on the environment and the climate. Project teams are poorly equipped to make decisions and prefer to avoid conflicts instead of having a healthy discussion based on different perspectives. We need to learn ways of making decisions that give better outcomes.

Building Decisions presents a framework and practical guidelines for everyday decision-making. The authors introduce the reader to a specific decision-making system, Choosing By Advantages (CBA), and explain the CBA Tabular decision-making method. Providing detailed explanations using relatable examples such as choosing a phone and renovating a kitchen, the book also uses case studies of large construction projects from the authors’ professional careers, including a museum in San Francisco, a tunnel in England, and the main railway station in Munich, to explain the CBA method. These varied examples will help the reader to improve their own decision-making process through critical reflection.

Written by three curious experts who founded a research lab focusing on decision-making and want the world to make better decisions. Paz, Annett, and Randi have published dozens of peer-reviewed papers and trained multiple practitioners and engineers on how to make collaborative decisions using CBA. They have designed this book to help professionals, leaders, anyone, and everyone make better and more inclusive decisions and achieve better outcomes.