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Build Or Repair: The Damage Protocol
Two days ago, my friend Anu who provides a number of the more lateral things I write about, sent me a link to Yahoo Canada News with an article on pint glass re-design to allegedly reduce the healthcare need in treating victims of bar room brawls. You can read the original article by clicking above on the England Football shirt..
The opening paragraph goes like this:
“Drunken pub fights in Britain are set to get safer with the invention of a strengthened beer glass that health authorities hope will cut the huge bill for treating inebriated brawlers. The traditional pint glass — which holds just over half a litre of beer and is favoured by drinkers across Britain — has been redesigned so it is harder to smash, said Design Bridge, the company behind two prototypes. And even if the new models are smashed, the dangerous shards of glass are held together by a layer of resin, said the company when at a launch event Thursday. British interior minister Alan Johnson praised the new models and said the properties of the current pint glass are to blame for much of the country’s alcohol-related violence.”
The bold print is my accentuation rather than Alan’s.
From a bit of research, I found that there have been others who have ventured down this route, most recently the UK Home Office who, in a press release appearing in The Times on August 25th 2009, stated:
“The UK’s Home Office has set a team of designers to work on a pint glass which will be attractive and will not shard on breaking. The unbreakable polycarbonate glasses bounce off floors rather than smash and are strong enough for a car to park on them”.
The full article can be read here on the quite fascinating ‘ICIS Chemicals Confidential’ blog (which I am sure you have all already bookmarked). I can’t ascertain whether the two statements are linked in any way other than the combined focus on pint glass material.
The main purpose of both ventures (assuming that they are not one in the same), is to reduce the damage done by fights that include pint glasses. The logic being that if a victim is less harmed, the treatment needed requires less resource than before.
Despite the straight-forward reasoning, I interpret the bold words in Alan Johnson’s statement in a slightly different way…
Lets look at a different case:
I often walk along a particular street in Soho and several months ago, I noticed that the building work being carried out on a piece of land (that happens to be adjacent to Stringfelllow’s), had the below sign attached to the boarding:
It’s a catchy name, but on closer inspection, this firm have a mandate that goes deeper:
In an ingenious move, someone realised that there was a point of differentiation that wasn’t just price, speed or build quality.
Their point of differentiation tackles some of the least pleasant traits of many building sites, and that is the lewd behaviour of workers, especially to women. It is along these lines they have essentially re-designed what a building firm can be.
But they didn’t stop with the lewd behaviour mandate, the ‘Good Neighbour’ section speaks of ‘Full and regular communication’ with all nearby.
The environmental impact, cleanliness, accessibility, accountability and safety angles are covered, in a way that portrays exactly what this firm expects from workers and offers to the public.
Despite sensing that the workers are almost always silent whenever I walk past, I have wondered whether the ‘Code of Considerate Practice’ was simply paying lip service, rather than being a reality.
So, I went and spoke to one of the workers and asked about their code.
It turns out that this is like a belief system that is ingrained within their working practice. For a start, when applying for work, you are asked about your morals as much as you are about your workmanship skills (in the more traditional sense).
Wow.
Their competitive advantage is extreme. To favour another firm, without the same level of consideration, would be to favour the rude wolf whistles whenever a female walks past.
They have changed the game for others, in the same way as, eventually, mobile phone networks will realise that price and ‘bundle’ isn’t anywhere near as competitive as the level of concierge services that can be offered, and adored, by citizens.
But back to the point in question.
Here, we see a singular difference between the re-design of pint glasses and a building firm, and that is one of (what I call) ‘damage protocol’.
Essentially you choose whether to build or repair. It’s an intentionally negative layout as there are negative factors contributing to building site perception and pub violence.
Click on the below picture to expand:
This is similar to the logic of cause and effect – or, if you like, damage limitation. But not exactly.
You see, the pint glass re-design is trying to affect the resulting outcomes and the builder re-design is trying to affect the contributing factors.
By trying to diminish the contributing factors, the resulting outcomes are accelerated and extended. This is because the benefit is indirectly proportional to the preceding negativity.
In contrast, when solely addressing the outcomes, there is no reduction in the contributing negative factors, thus the benefit is short-lived and mostly on an individual basis (i.e. the one person who managed to escape with a cut arm rather than bleeding to death).
This is a subtle point as one could assume that the individual benefit is worthwhile alone, but the communal benefit would be far higher, and longer, if the contributing negative factors were prioritised.
Perhaps the people who are getting so excited about a new pint glass are also looking at how to reduce drink-related violence in pubs? But then again, they need people to keep drinking otherwise their glasses wont be used (for whatever purpose). Commerce and politics so often guide the lens in which a damage protocol is viewed.
Such is life.
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