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 different regions. The buildings were erected by two differe

In his memo, vice president of highly diversified company advocated to use construction services of Alpha Company as opposed to Zeta Company. His arguments in favor of Alpha and not Zeta Company are as follows. First, while constructing two building with identical floor plans, Zeta’s constructions cost third as much. Second, out of ten years last year expenses for maintenance were twice as Alpha’s building. Third, energy consumption for Zeta building was higher every year since construction then Alpha’s. Forth, Alpha’s company has a stable employees with little turnover rate. Even though author’s arguments seem logical at first and have some merit, each assumption needs to be thoroughly checked and analyzed. There could be some deeps and holes in each premise which would undermine the conclusion.

First, the author assumes that if two buildings have identical floor plans they should cost the same amount. However, the cost also depends on the location and the ground. For instance, if building is located in mountains, it would cost more to transport materials and employees, which would add to the cost. In case, building’s ground is more dense and complicated to dig, it would increase the cost of the construction even if the floor plan is the same. Accordingly, ground work and transportation could add up to overall cost, which would undermine the author’s argument.

Second, vice president mentioned that only one year the cost of maintenance cost for Zeta building was twice as much as Alpha’s building. However, just one year do not show the whole picture. In case, all the other nine years cost of maintenance of Alpha’s building was higher then argument is seriously flawed. The author need to present holistic picture showing maintenance cost fluctuation over the whole decade.

Thirdly, vice president states that energy consumption for Zeta building is higher then Alpha’s each year since construction. Since the author told us nothing about regions of two building, the region for Zeta’s building location could be at a colder or hotter location then Alpha’s building, hence, the energy consumption is higher. For instance, Zeta’s building could be at Hawaii and air conditioning costs are sky rocketing as temperature is 100 degrees outside and Alpha’s building could be located at San Francisco with its mild and stable weather.

Last vice president’s argument in favor’s of Alpha’s company is that Alpha has less turnover and stable workforce. But, the author fails to mention the period of time for Alpha’s lesser turnover. Had the company had a stable workforce and small turnover rate for the whole decade or only for the last year? Zeta Company could have increase in turnover only for the last couple of years but could have been stable eight years before.

As a result, vice president needs to check all his assumptions against verified information and provide evidentiary support for each premise, and then he could be able to convince readers. The author’s assumptions as they stand right now render his conclusion invalid as locations of building could play important role in building price difference and companies could have lesser of bigger turnover for only short period of time.