PS-REP-212 · r1
REPRESENTATION
OBSERVED
ENGAGED
THE BASELINE NEVER HAPPENED
What was saved is the distance from something that did not occur.
01 DEFINITION
Condition in which the result being reported is a difference between what happened and what is held to have happened otherwise, so the figure rests on a course of events nobody observed and which cannot now be run.
02 CONDITIONS
UNCERTAINTY
UNRECORDED
The course of events being compared against was never observed and cannot be run now.
TIME PRESSURE
LOW
Nothing is urgent; the figure is read at leisure and carried into decisions later.
ERROR ASYMMETRY
DEFERRED
A generous baseline costs nothing when published and is paid when the claim is examined.
OPERATOR STATE
SUPERVISORY
The reader is judging a result rather than producing one.
03 WHERE IT APPEARS
ENERGYReported reduction is the distance from a consumption pattern that was prevented from occurring.
MEDICALA prevention programme reports the cases it is held to have avoided, none of which were seen.
FINANCEA hedging result is the difference from an exposure that was never carried.
MANUFACTURINGMaintenance value is stated as failures that did not occur and therefore were never counted.
PUBLIC SERVICEAn intervention is credited with outcomes measured against a population that was not left alone.
LOGISTICSRouting improvement is reported against journeys nobody made.
04 WHAT AEON WORKED THROUGH HERE
What the work had achieved was expressed as a saving, and a saving is a gap between the recorded year and a year that was never lived. Everything measured sat on the same chart as that gap, drawn in the same weight. The work went into what the picture says about where each figure came from — counted, or worked out from a course of events that did not run — so that the comparison stayed a comparison.
The question it keeps returning to is what such a figure may be set beside — presented next to measured quantities it is read as one of them, and presented apart from them it is read as an argument rather than a result.