The Measure of Unexpected Necessities

The first determines whether you can afford to begin.

The second determines whether you could afford to have begun.

Few things were calculated with greater precision than the final cost of work that had been estimated incorrectly.

Every stone was measured.

Every brush was counted.

Every hour was recorded.

This precision traditionally began shortly after the citizen had agreed to a considerably smaller number.

There was, of course, a proper procedure for building a house.

Before laying a single stone, a prudent citizen would invite the appropriate craftsmen to inspect the site and submit their offers.

The masons would measure the walls.

The carpenters would inspect the beams.

The roofers would count tiles.

The painters would study the surfaces with the grave concentration of people who knew that paint behaved differently depending on what one attempted to attach it to.

Each would then prepare a document describing the work to be done, the materials required, and, most importantly, the amount of money for which they were prepared to do it.

These documents were called offers.

They were regulated by several Royal Acts, three Guild Ordinances and a remarkably thick volume entitled The Proper Measurement of Works and Materials, which ensured that citizens could confidently compare them.

And compare them they did.

One mason offered to complete the stonework for four thousand crowns.

Another required four thousand eight hundred.

A third, apparently unfamiliar with the customs of the kingdom, asked for five thousand six hundred.

The citizen chose the first.

This was considered sensible.

Work began on Monday.

On Tuesday, the Master Mason discovered that the lower stones required additional preparation.

On Wednesday, several joints required a different mortar.

On Thursday, a section of wall had to be strengthened.

On Friday, additional scaffolding was required to reach a place that had been visible during the original inspection but had apparently become considerably higher since then.

The citizen watched all this with interest.

“How much of this was included in the offer?” he eventually asked.

The Master Mason looked surprised.

“None of it.”

“Then why are you doing it?”

“Because it is necessary.”

The citizen considered this.

“And when did we decide that I wanted it done?”

“You did not.”

“Then who did?”

The Master Mason looked puzzled by the question.

“Nobody. It became necessary.”

“When?”

“While we were doing it.”

The citizen looked at the wall.

It was, he had to admit, a very fine wall.

“And what happens now?”

“We add it to the final account.”

“Was any of this foreseeable?”

The Master Mason smiled patiently.

“My dear fellow. Anyone who has built houses for as long as I have knows that things like this happen all the time.”

The citizen was relieved.

“Excellent. Then I assume you allowed for them in the offer.”

The Master Mason stopped smiling.

“No.”

The citizen waited.

The Master Mason waited too.

“But you just said they happen all the time.”

“They do.”

“And you have been building houses for a long time?”

“Thirty-seven years.”

“Then presumably you have encountered them before.”

“Hundreds of times.”

The citizen brightened.

“So after the first few houses, you knew to expect them.”

The Master Mason frowned.

“One can never know exactly what one will find.”

“Of course not.”

The citizen pointed towards the horizon.

“A thunderstorm might wash away the foundations.”

“Indeed.”

“The ground might prove unable to bear the house.”

“Certainly.”

“The Grey Mountains might move during the night.”

The Master Mason considered this.

“They have been known to.”

“Those things I understand. We cannot put everything the world might do into an offer.”

The Master Mason nodded approvingly.

“But we are not talking about moving mountains.”

The Master Mason stopped nodding.

“We are talking about mortar.”

“Yes.”

“Scaffolding.”

“Yes.”

“And preparing stones before laying other stones on top of them.”

“That is a somewhat simplified description of masonry.”

“I am a somewhat simple customer.”

The Master Mason sighed.

“These things depend on circumstances.”

“Circumstances which occur often?”

“Very often.”

“And which an experienced mason knows about?”

“Obviously.”

“And which therefore become less surprising with every house he builds?”

The Master Mason looked increasingly uncomfortable.

“That is not how offers work.”

The citizen had suspected they might eventually arrive at this point.

“How do offers work?”

The Master Mason straightened himself.

“We offer the work that can be determined beforehand.”

“And the rest?”

“Is charged according to actual expenditure.”

“Even when experience tells you that there will almost certainly be a rest?”

“One cannot know how much.”

The citizen thought about this.

“Could you estimate it?”

“Of course.”

The answer came so quickly that both men were briefly surprised by it.

“How much?”

The Master Mason looked at the wall, then at the foundations, and finally at the scaffolding.

“For a house like this?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps another thousand crowns. Fifteen hundred if the eastern wall is worse than it looks.”

The citizen stared at him.

“So when you offered four thousand crowns, you expected the work might actually cost five thousand?”

“Perhaps five and a half.”

“And you did not think this worth mentioning?”

“It was not part of the offer.”

There it was again.

The citizen was beginning to suspect that an offer was a very particular kind of document.

It described with considerable precision what the craftsman was willing to promise before work began, it did not necessarily describe with similar precision what the craftsman expected the work to cost.

“Could you have offered five and a half thousand crowns?” the citizen asked.

“Certainly.”

“Would that have covered what you reasonably expected?”

“Probably.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

The Master Mason looked genuinely astonished.

“Because then you would have hired the other mason.”

The citizen could find no fault with this reasoning.

Which troubled him considerably.

“So the other mason offered four thousand eight hundred.”

“Yes.”

“And the third asked for five thousand six hundred.”

“A ridiculous offer.”

“Why?”

“Far too expensive.”

“How much will my wall cost?”

The Master Mason inspected it again.

“Five thousand four hundred, perhaps five and a half.”

The citizen looked down the street, in the direction from which the third mason had departed.

“Then his offer was remarkably accurate.”

“That is hardly the point.”

“What is the point?”

“The point is that nobody would hire a mason who offered five thousand six hundred crowns when another offered the same work for four thousand.”

“But they did not offer the same work.”

The Master Mason shook his head.

“Of course they did. Otherwise you could not compare the offers.”

The citizen thought this was perhaps the most interesting thing he had learned about comparison.

Apparently, two offers could only be compared if they described the same thing.

And if one of them happened to include more of what would actually be required, this made it less competitive.

Accuracy, it seemed, had become a commercial disadvantage.

Fortunately, the Kingdom had anticipated disputes arising from such matters.

It had anticipated almost all disputes.

There were Royal Acts governing additional work, Guild Rules governing measurement, Ordinances concerning materials, provisions for unforeseen conditions, exceptions for necessary work, special exceptions for urgently necessary work, and several particularly sophisticated paragraphs concerning work that had become necessary as a consequence of other necessary work.

There were rules

• specifying when a craftsman had to inform a citizen.
• specifying when he did not.
• specifying what could be charged without prior agreement.
• defining circumstances under which prior agreement could reasonably have been considered impractical.
• explaining how to calculate the reasonable cost of work that nobody had explicitly ordered.

The citizen spent several evenings reading them.

The more he read, the more impressed he became.

Almost every imaginable situation had been considered, almost every conceivable danger had a paragraph, almost every paragraph had an exception.

And almost every exception referred to another paragraph.

Eventually he visited the Office of Proper Construction and spoke to a clerk.

“I have a simple question.”

The clerk looked concerned.

Simple questions were notoriously difficult to process.

“My mason performed work that was not in his offer.”

“That can happen.”

“He says it was necessary.”

“That can also happen.”

“He did not ask me before doing it.”

“There are circumstances under which this is permitted.”

“He knew before beginning that work of this kind would probably be necessary.”

“That does not necessarily mean he knew precisely which work would be necessary.”

“He could estimate its likely cost.”

“An estimate is not certainty.”

“I understand.”

The clerk relaxed slightly.

“So I would like to know something else.”

“Yes?”

“What was I supposed to learn from the offer?”

The clerk blinked.

“The price.”

“But it wasn’t the price.”

“The offered price.”

“What is the difference?”

“The offered price is the price of the work contained in the offer.”

“And the work not contained in the offer?”

“That is additional work.”

“Even when it was reasonably foreseeable?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

The clerk reached behind him and removed a volume of considerable size from a shelf.

“This.”

The citizen looked at it.

It was entitled Royal Commentary on Foreseeable and Unforeseeable Necessities in the Execution of Proper Works, Volume III.

There were four other volumes beside it.

The citizen did not open it.

Instead he asked: “Would it not be simpler to require the craftsman to tell me what he reasonably expects the whole thing to cost?”

The clerk looked at him with the patient kindness reserved for people unfamiliar with the complexities of professional affairs.

“But he cannot know that.”

“He seems remarkably good at knowing it once the work is finished.”

“That is because then the work has been done.”

“And remarkably good at estimating it once I have already hired him.”

“That is professional experience.”

“Could he use some of that experience before I hire him?”

The clerk hesitated.

“There are regulations concerning offers.”

“I know.”

The citizen looked at the shelves.

There were hundreds of them.

And slowly he began to understand.

The rules had been written to protect citizens from every conceivable way in which building work might depart from expectation. But somewhere in the attempt to describe every conceivable departure, they had become extraordinarily good at explaining why each departure was permissible.

There was a rule for everything.

Which meant there was almost always a rule for the thing that had just happened.

The craftsmen had not created this system, they had merely become very good at living in it. And they had learned something important about competition. A craftsman who included every reasonably foreseeable necessity in his offer appeared expensive, one who left them out appeared competitive.

Both might eventually build the same wall.

Both might eventually charge the same number of crowns.

But only one of them was likely to be hired.

Thus the craftsmen of the Releasable Kingdom had achieved something remarkable.

They had made optimism competitive.

And accuracy expensive.

–

A few days later, the Witch encountered the third mason at the edge of the market.

He was buying rope.

The Witch had always regarded rope as one of the more trustworthy products sold in the Releasable Kingdom. It was usually sold by length, and very little additional rope became unexpectedly necessary after one had paid for it.

“You offered five thousand six hundred crowns for a wall,” she said.

The mason looked at her.

“I did.”

“Another mason offered four thousand.”

“I know.”

“He got the work.”

“I know that too.”

“It will cost about five and a half.”

The mason considered this for a moment.

“That sounds about right.”

The Witch narrowed her eyes.

“How did you know?”

“I measured it.”

“So did the others.”

“I have no doubt.”

“And you inspected the same stones?”

“Yes.”

“The same ground?”

“Yes.”

“The same wall?”

“There was only one.”

The Witch liked him.

“Then why was your number different?”

The mason put down the rope.

“Because I have built walls before.”

This was not the answer she had expected.

“So has the man who got the work.”

“Thirty-seven years, I believe.”

“Then he should be better at it than you.”

“He probably is.”

The Witch waited.

The mason sighed.

“Building the wall and offering to build the wall are different crafts.”

This interested her.

He took a small notebook from his coat.

It was worn at the edges and considerably less impressive than The Proper Measurement of Works and Materials.

“I keep records.”

“Of what?”

“Of what I thought would happen. And what happened instead.”

The Witch opened the notebook.

There were houses.

Many houses.

Beside each were numbers. Stone. Mortar. Timber. Preparation. Additional supports. Hours. Things discovered after opening walls. Things expected but not needed. Things nobody had expected at all.

“You keep all this?”

“How else would I become better at my work?”

The Witch turned several pages.

“Your estimates became larger.”

“More accurate.”

“That is not generally considered an improvement in an offer.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because citizens compare the first number.”

“And craftsmen know this?”

“Of course.”

“So the safest way to win the work is to make the first number small.”

“One of the safest.”

“And then discover reality afterwards.”

The mason smiled.

“Reality has excellent timing.”

The Witch continued through the notebook.

Something bothered her.

“There are many additional costs.”

“Yes.”

“But very few additional savings.”

The mason nodded.

“That was one of the first things I learned.”

“Why?”

“Because risk is not symmetrical.”

The Witch looked pleased.

She enjoyed sentences that made obvious things sound suspicious.

The mason pointed towards a nearby house.

“Suppose I estimate the work required to repair that wall. What can happen?”

“It might require less work.”

“It might.”

“It might require more.”

“Very easily.”

“The stones might be better than expected.”

“Yes.”

“Or much worse.”

“Yes.”

“You might discover that one section does not need replacing.”

“A small saving.”

“Or discover that the timber behind it is rotten.”

“A large expense.”

The Witch nodded.

“So the pleasant surprises have a floor.”

“Eventually there is no work left to save.”

“But the unpleasant ones”

“Can become remarkably creative.”

The Witch smiled.

The Grey Mountains had taught her something similar.

“So what do you do?”

“If something is reasonably foreseeable, I calculate it in.”

“Even if it might not be necessary?”

“Especially then.”

“That makes your offer more expensive.”

“It makes my offer more useful.”

“To whom?”

“The person paying it.”

The Witch thought this an unusually unfashionable definition of usefulness.

“And if the work turns out not to be necessary?”

“I do not perform it.”

“And the citizen still pays?”

The mason looked offended.

“Why would he?”

“So the house becomes cheaper than your offer?”

“Sometimes.”

“Citizens must find that confusing.”

“They usually recover.”

The Witch imagined the peculiar distress of a citizen receiving a final account smaller than expected.

“And you can still comply with all the Royal Acts and Guild Ordinances?”

“I have to.”

“Why?”

“I rather enjoy being a mason.”

He put the notebook back into his coat.

“The Guild can remove my allowance to practise the craft. The rules tell me what I must document, how I must measure, what materials I may use, what I may charge and what I must disclose.”

“And they tell you how to make a good offer?”

“No.”

“What does?”

He tapped the notebook.

“This.”

The Witch was beginning to see why the third mason had seemed unfamiliar with the customs of the Kingdom.

He obeyed its rules.

He simply did not use them as a substitute for thinking.

“And what about things you genuinely cannot estimate?”

“I don’t.”

The Witch raised an eyebrow.

This was almost certainly against some tradition.

“You simply refuse to give a price?”

“I refuse to invent one.”

“What do you give the citizen instead?”

“Evidence.”

He opened the notebook again.

“If the work is complicated, likely to change, or depends on something we cannot see until we begin, I show them what happened before.”

He pointed to several entries.

“Seven similar houses. In two, the work remained simple. Three required additional supports. One had substantial damage behind the wall. One became a considerably different project once we opened it.”

“And then?”

“I explain what we know. What we don’t. What usually happens. What has happened occasionally. And what we can learn cheaply before committing to the rest.”

“That is not much of an offer.”

“It is a different offer.”

“How different?”

“Small.”

The Witch approved immediately.

“We agree on exactly what we will investigate. We open one section. Remove three stones. Examine one beam. Whatever gives us the information we need.”

“And then you offer the whole job?”

“If we know enough.”

“And if you don’t?”

“We learn something else.”

The Witch considered this.

“So instead of making the uncertain work part of a large offer—”

“I make reducing the uncertainty the work.”

“And charge for that?”

“Of course. Learning requires craftsmen too.”

“But then the citizen might spend money and still decide not to build.”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that waste?”

The mason shook his head.

“Discovering that you should not spend ten thousand crowns after spending two hundred is one of the cheaper things that can happen during construction.”

The Witch looked towards the citizen’s house.

The scaffolding had grown again.

“And for ordinary work?”

“If it is foreseeable, calculate it in.”

“For uncertain work?”

“Show what experience tells us.”

“For complicated work?”

“Make learning about it a separate piece of work.”

“And if reality is kinder than expected?”

The mason picked up his rope.

“Then the citizen pays less.”

The Witch smiled.

“An interesting business model.”

“It has disadvantages.”

“You lose offers.”

“Frequently.”

“Because you appear expensive.”

“Yes.”

“Even though you may not be.”

“Yes.”

“And the craftsmen whose offers appear cheaper eventually charge roughly what you offered?”

“Quite often.”

The Witch watched him tie the rope to his cart.

“So accuracy makes you less competitive.”

“Only until someone has built enough houses.”

That evening, the Witch returned to the citizen.

She found him studying his original offer beside the latest account.

The two documents had very little in common except the name of the mason.

“I have found your expensive mason,” she said.

The citizen looked up.

“The one I couldn’t afford?”

“The very one.”

“What did he say?”

The Witch placed a small piece of parchment on the table.

On it she had written three sentences.

If it is foreseeable, calculate it in.

If it is uncertain, show what experience has taught you.

If uncertainty itself is the problem, sell learning before selling the solution.

The citizen read them twice.

“Is that allowed?”

“Oh yes,” said the Witch.

“That may be the strangest part.”