Construction projects

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Construction projects

by sankruth » Sun Jan 13, 2008 11:01 pm
In several cities, the government is going ahead with ambitious construction projects despite the high office vacancy rates in those cities. The vacant offices, though available for leasing, unfortunately do not meet the requirements for the facilities needed, such as court houses and laboratories. The government, therefore, is not guilty of any fiscal wastefulness.

Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument above depends?
(A) Adaptation of vacant office space to meet the government’s requirements, if possible, would not make leasing such office space a more cost-effective alternative to new construction.
(B) The government prefers leasing facilities to owning them in cases where the two alternatives are equally cost-effective.
(C) If facilities available for leasing come very close to meeting the government’s requirements for facilities the government needs, the government can relax its own requirements slightly and consider those facilities in compliance.
(D) The government’s construction projects would not on being completed, add to the stock of facilities available for leasing in the cities concerned.
(E) Before embarking on any major construction project, the government is required by law to establish beyond any reasonable doubt that there are no alternatives that are most cost-effective.

Please explain the rationale behind your answer choice.
Source: — Critical Reasoning |

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by camitava » Mon Jan 14, 2008 1:20 am
Hey Sankruth,
Where from u get these complicated CR Qs? Ha ha ha! :wink: Ohhh! Jokes apart! IMO E. First let me know whether I am correct or not. After that I will certainly explain...
Correct me If I am wrong


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by sankruth » Mon Jan 14, 2008 1:32 am
This is in the 1000CR doc. E is not the correct choice. The correct choice as per the document is A.

I am feeling slightly (not a lot, just slightly :wink: ) happy that there is atleast one other person (you) who feels that this is a difficult question. I have my test in 2 weeks time and was feeling demotivated for getting this wrong.

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by camitava » Mon Jan 14, 2008 2:11 am
Hey Sankruth, frankly speaking while attempting this Qs, I tried to look more in the options! That's where I did the mistake. I don't know whether u will believe it or not but I really chose A and E at first. But A is very much straight forward and E is having some twist in it. So I prefer E to A. But it's quite true that A is somehow much related to the assumption of the Qs. Is not it? If u think in different way, I will like to provide my approach here -
Govt. will obviously look for the financial effectiveness. This is also supported by the conclusion. And here A comes with more assumption on which a person has to depend to draw the conclusion.
Got my point, sankruth?
Correct me If I am wrong


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by Stuart@KaplanGMAT » Mon Jan 14, 2008 5:35 am
(A) is definitely the answer.

The scope of the argument is whether the government is being fiscally wasteful.

The evidence, in summary, is that the current office space didn't meet the government's needs.

To reach the conclusion that the government made the correct economic decision in building new office space, the author has to be assuming that there were no alternatives to building that would have been cheaper.

(A) supports this point by affirming that at least one option, leasing and then remodelling, would not have been cheaper than building.

A great way to narrow down the choices when you're stuck at two is to use Kaplan's Denial Test. Look at the opposite of each answer and see what impact it has on the argument.

Let's look at the denial (opposite) of (A):

"It is not true that adaptation of vacant office space to meet the government’s requirements, if possible, would not make leasing such office space a more cost-effective alternative to new construction."

If we eliminate the double negative and paraphrase, we get:

"Adapting the vacant space to meet the government's requirements would make leasing more cost-effective than building."

Well, if adaptation/leasing is more cost-effective than building, then the government is being fiscally wasteful. Since the oppositve of (A) pretty much destroys the argument, we know that (A) is something that must be true in order for the argument to make sense: in other words, an assumption.

Let's examine (E):

"Before embarking on any major construction project, the government is required by law to establish beyond any reasonable doubt that there are no alternatives that are most cost-effective."

Just because something is required by law, does that mean that the law is always followed? No, and we can't assume that even the government always follows the law (read the newspaper any day of the year and find lots of examples in which the government or government officials violated the law).

Further, does (E) have to be true to reach the author's conclusion? No: for the author's conclusion to be true, we just need to know that there are no more cost-effective choices in this particular instance - we don't need a universal law saying that the government always examines every alternative.

Remember, the correct answer to an assumption question is something that must be true in order for the conclusion to make sense. Just because an answer may strengthen the conclusion doesn't necessarily mean that it need be true. (In other words, the correct answer to a strengthening question may not be the correct answer to an assumption question.)
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by khanshainur » Tue May 10, 2016 3:08 am
I would choose A