When I was a freshly minted engineer, I remember attending seminars taught by lawyers. They taught us about professional liability and the standard of care. Apparently, our designs weren’t held to the standard of perfection, but rather to the standard of the normal level of professional practice in the area we worked.

While that seemed a bit vague to me, it made sense that the real world dictates of limited time and money should allow that our work wouldn’t be perfect. As I hired architects and engineers over the years, I kept in mind that their design work would likely have some flaws. I tried to work as a team to catch mistakes prior to seeing them in the field, but have always understood that I wasn’t purchasing perfection.

Yesterday the presidential panel studying the BP Gulf oil spill produced a report favorable to BP, as reported in ENR. Fred Bartlit, the panel’s chief investigator, said, “To date we have not seen a single instance where a human being made a conscious decision to favor dollars over safety.”

The story in the media, of course, has focused on the failures. Two US Congressman sent a letter to BP in June stating, “The common feature of these five decisions is that they posed a trade-off between cost and well safety. Time after time, it appears that BP made decisions that increased the risk of a blowout to save the company time or expense.”

Those of us that actually produce things for a living, as opposed to those that count or critique that work, understand that every decision is a trade-off. We could always work to a higher standard of quality, of safety, of speed or of cost effectiveness. We just can’t do all of them at once.

It’s important for each of us to think about where we live on that continuum. Each of us needs to set our standards and understand what is acceptable and what’s not. Yes, the scenarios change, but principles shouldn’t.

If you want to be a leader in construction, you need to develop those principles about standards of quality, safety, schedule and cost. You need to decide what you believe. Finding the courage to stand up for those beliefs only happens if you actually know what you believe. If you don’t know what you believe, check out Joyful Living as a program that leads you through the process.

So don’t live your life terrified by litigation, you’ll never get anything done. Instead, decide on the standards you will live and work to, then strive to make them your legacy.