Choosing By Advantages

Alan Mossman, The Change Business Ltd1

Feb 2012

Good decisions matter because they lead to effective actions that produce desired
results. That’s why the method you use to make decisions matters.

Choosing By Advantages (CBA) enables decision makers to concentrate on what is

important: the advantages (beneficial differences) that each alternative could deliver to
stakeholders and basing the decision on the total importance of those advantages. By
focusing on advantages for the customer/end user of the project CBA connects
decision makers with their clients’ ideas about what they want. Involving constructors
ensures that build-ability is considered.
Developed by Civil Engineer Jim Suhr while employed by the US Forest Service, CBA is
a system and a set of processes for making decisions that enables organisations,
project teams and individuals to make more effective choices.
Why use CBA?
CBA creates an open, transparent and auditable decision process for design and
construction work that acknowledges the complexity of most projects and of the client
systems that commission them. CBA is well able to handle both objective and
subjective data within a single decision process.
Design and construction projects are increasingly complex, rapid and uncertain. Client
systems are increasingly complex too. No single person is ‘the client’, rather the client
is made up of a complex and changing group of individuals with different, and probably
changing, needs and expectations over the gestation of a project. A clear audit trail for
decisions allows decisions to be revisited when necessary. A clear delivery programme
allows all to understand the implications of changing those decisions.
As Sheena Iyengar has shown in The Art of Choosing (Twelve 2010), humans have a
tendency to shy away from too much choice. In design there is a tendency to leap to
conclusions before all reasonable options have been explored - a strategy for avoiding
choice overload. CBA offers a systematic way for all stakeholders to manage the
process of deciding between large numbers of alternatives without being overwhelmed
and ensures that we do not artificially limit the number of alternatives considered in the
complex decisions we face in design for the built environment.
Using A3s to document your decisions adds further to the transparency of the decision
process (if you have not come across an A3 before it is a process of recording critical
information, improvement processes, decisions, proposals, on one side of a single
sheet of A3 paper. See John Shook’s Managing to Learn (LEI 2008). A3s are being

1
Reprinted in Eynon, John (2013) The Design Manager’s Handbook Wiley-Blackwell pp 197-200

© Alan Mossman 2012 1 of 4 www.thechangebusiness.co.uk

 Alan Mossman: Choosing By Advantages

used with increasing frequency in US design and construction organisations to ensure

that design decisions are systematically arrived at and documented.)
What is CBA?
CBA is a system for basing decisions on the importance of beneficial differences (i.e.
advantages) between alternatives. It has key definitions, models, principles and a set of
methods. The key principles are:
1. Decisions must be based on the importance of the beneficial differences
between alternatives.
2. Decisions must be anchored to relevant facts.
3. Different types of decisions call for different sound methods of decision making
4. Decision makers must learn and skillfully use sound methods of decision making.
As principle 3 implies there are a number of different methods for different types of
decisions. These range from simple binary decisions with no resource implications to
complex ones with many alternatives each with its own set of resource implications.
It is important to consider resource requirements in a different way from other attributes
as there is an important question for most stakeholders about what they would do with
the resource if it wasn’t consumed on the decision currently being considered. In CBA
the beneficial differences of non-resource attributes of the alternatives are evaluated
before any consideration is given to resources so that any trade-offs can be clearly
explored.
CBA avoids the pitfalls of unsound methods such as Kepner-Tregoe, choosing by pros
and cons, using advantages and disadvantages, pair-wise comparison and weighting
rating and calculating (WRC) systems including criteria weighting, factor weighting &
cost-benefit analysis.
What sort of situations call for CBA?
• Deciding whether or not to bid or accept a contract
• Selecting and managing projects and programs
• Selecting consultants, contractors, and suppliers
• Selecting and purchasing materials, equipment, and other products
• Choosing combination of design alternatives
• Choosing between competing alignments for road and rail projects
These are just some of the bigger choices. CBA can be applied to any decision. A
good way to learn it is to use it for even the simplest instantaneous mentally-formed
decisions. CBA basics are being taught in primary and secondary schools in the US.
In design and construction, construction companies like Boldt Construction, DPR,
Herrero Contractors; designers like HKS, Smith Group, Boulder Associates (architects),
CH2M Hill (engineers), and clients like Michigan State University, Sutter Health and
UHS, the largest US healthcare provider, are using CBA to make sound decisions and
A3s to document them. Examples include:
• Universal Health Services – decisions about a number of capital projects
• Sutter Health San Francisco Hospital designs – selection of seismic damping
system

© Alan Mossman 2012 2 of 4 www.thechangebusiness.co.uk

 Alan Mossman: Choosing By Advantages

• Selecting trade partners/sub-contractors

• Selecting combinations of structure, façade, vertical circulation, etc in a set-
based design
• Selecting policy and spending priorities
The US Parks Service, which oversees many major built environment decisions in
sensitive contexts, describes CBA as “a system of concepts and methods to structure
decision-making. CBA quantifies the relative importance of non-monetary advantages
or benefits for a set of alternatives and allows subsequent benefit and cost
consideration during decision-making. CBA may be used as an evaluation method
during the evaluation phase of the value analysis job plan, in lieu of the more traditional
weighted-factor analysis. CBA is the preferred evaluation method where critical non-
monetary benefits need to be evaluated.”
CBA and Value Management
Some in Value Management (its called Value Engineering in the USA) have used CBA.
CBA supports value optimisation and constructability decisions throughout the design
process. It can also be used to find and evaluate new alternatives if bids come in too
high in a conventionally tendered project.
SAVE, www.value-eng.org, recognises CBA and includes references to it. Only some
of its practitioners follow it as CBA demonstrates the unsoundness of some older
methods such as those involving the weighting of factors. In the UK some Institute of
Value Management practitioners use CBA though it is not one of the techniques
mentioned on the IVM website which features a number of unsound techniques.
How do I use CBA?
Simple processes are easy to learn and, once you have built the habit, easy to use.
For more complex decisions of the sort we find in design and construction, facilitation is
useful and some training and mentoring for all participants is important in order that the
meeting does not get bogged down with discussions about process that are covered in
the training. John Koga, Director, Process and Supply Chain Improvement at
HerreroBoldt, a construction joint venture, commented that “very few use CBA correctly
without mentoring. They slip into incorrect and dangerous habits that are no longer
CBA.”
Larger companies in the US are developing an internal facilitation capability to enable
project teams to focus on content while the facilitator holds the process as the team
works through the five stages of the complete process:
I. Stage setting - defining the purpose and identifying the issues, the criteria of
the decision and who should be involved
II. Innovation - identifying the alternatives and making the differences between
them visible and tangible
III. Decision making - listing the advantages of each alternative, deciding the
importance of each advantage and choosing the alternative with the greatest
importance of advantages before considering the resource implications of the
alternatives and making the draft decision.
IV. Reconsideration - reviewing the draft decision to check that it really is what is

© Alan Mossman 2012 3 of 4 www.thechangebusiness.co.uk

 Alan Mossman: Choosing By Advantages

wanted, changing it if appropriate and then committing to the choice.

V. Implementation - doing what is necessary to realise the decision in reality

The simplest decision processes may focus on stage 3 only but most decisions will
involve elements of all five stages.
Much work in stages 1 and 2 generally happens before the main meeting and is
reviewed at the start of the decision making stage. 4 and 5 happen after.
How can I learn CBA?
First, we teach people how to use correct data.
Second, we teach them how to use data correctly.
Jim Suhr
Jim Suhr has developed a CBA training programme. There are a number of trainers
with design and construction experience in the US and at least one in Europe. Suhr
suggests that the learning process involves:
• Learning just one set of CBA definitions, principles, models, and methods at
a time
• Unlearning (learn to not use) the corresponding unsound concepts and
methods that the CBA concepts and methods are replacing
• Relearning the CBA concepts and methods.
• Practicing and consistently using the CBA concepts and methods that you
have learned. (If possible, practice under the guidance of either a CBA
facilitator or instructor.)
• Teaching the CBA concepts and methods to other people. This will not only
be beneficial to them; it will also be beneficial to you. Then, return to step one
and learn more
For more information read Jim Suhr’s Choosing By Advantages (Greenwood 1999),
download introductory papers from http://www.decisioninnovations.com/ or read one
of Suhr’s new introductory booklets - you can contact Jim via decisioninnovations.com

There is a Choosing By Advantages User group on Linkedin http://bit.ly/CBA-user. You will also find
discussions mentioning CBA use in other Linkedin Groups such as Lean Construction Network
http://linkd.in/lcnetwork and LCI lean design forum http://linkd.in/leandesign

© Alan Mossman 2012 4 of 4 www.thechangebusiness.co.uk