Correcting my own bad news the same day
Our analysis flagged a garage as a top structural risk. Within hours we found it had already been repaired and corrected the record.
Our code and condition analysis rated the building's parking garage as top-tier structural risk. The rating leaned on an old engineer's letter that described heavy cracking, rusted rebar and spalled concrete, and we had nothing showing anyone had ever repaired it.
Later that same day, we turned up a shared drive folder that nobody had searched. I told the team to publish a correction to our own analysis, not let the wrong finding sit.
What was in the folder: a signed repair contract, nine paid invoices, and an engineered strengthening scope. The garage problem had been spotted and fixed years before we ever owned the building. I do not call that anyone's error. It was a gap in the paper trail, because our first search never reached the drive that held the receipts.
That day the risk register came down and the garage left the top-tier list. Three smaller verifications stayed open, to confirm the repair fully covers what is now planned for the building.
A few hours of being wrong is acceptable. Staying wrong once you have found the proof is not. Nobody was to blame for overlooking a document that nobody knew existed, so we handled the fix as ordinary diligence and not as something to be embarrassed about.
Story details
| Project | 301 W Osborn |
|---|---|
| Type | Mistake and repair |
| Year | 2026 |
| Firm telling | on the Common Ground wiki |