Preparation with another use

Text A: an original contemporary practice extract.

Before a community mosaic workshop, the organisers placed several unused carrying boards beside the worktables. They expected to need them if more people arrived than had booked. In fact, every name on the list appeared and nobody else came.

Near the end of the session, the adhesive beneath one group’s tiles was still soft, so their work could not be stacked with the other sections of the mosaic. The unused boards allowed volunteers to move those tiles separately to the drying room. Nobody had to stop working, and no wet section was pressed against another. The coordinator did not claim that the extra boards had rescued the whole mosaic. They had simply given the workshop room to handle a problem that had not been predicted.

Text B: an original contemporary practice extract.

The organisers of a public talk left twelve minutes between the first speaker and the final presentation. They had allowed this time in case the first speaker’s train was delayed. The train arrived early, and the talk began exactly as advertised.

During the questions, an audience member raised an issue that needed a detailed response. Instead of ending the discussion abruptly, the chair used the time that had been kept free. The audience heard a complete answer, while the final presentation still began on schedule. The empty space in the programme had not been used for the delay originally imagined, but it prevented one useful discussion from inconveniencing the next audience.

Both texts describe preparations made before a public activity.

What similarities can you identify in the ways the preparations prove useful in these extracts? Use evidence from both texts to support your answer.