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You have to make an initial determination as to where you are protecting. If a play is later made on the obstructed runner you need to know if you are going to call her out or call dead ball and enforce the OBS.
Several examples have been already given which show why you would be wrong to determine the award only after all play ends; here is an extreme one.
No runners, no outs. B1 gets a base hit thru the infield and rounds first. The ball is feilded by F7 and returned to the infield. B1 retreats toward 1B but trips over F3 several feet short of the bag. BU gives DDB signal.
F6 seeing R1 down hurries a throw to F3 which goes wide. R1 gets up and runs to 2B and on toward 3B. F3 recovers the ball and throws to F5 who tags R1 inches off 3B.
If you follow any of the "determine after the play' methods you could say that she lost several steps when she was going back to 1B so obvisouly she would have made 3B (she was tagged out by inches).
However at the time of OBS the ball was being held by F6 and the runner was retreating to 1B after rounding the bag on a clear single. If I am BU, I am going to have determined at the time of OBS that without the OBS she is ending up safe at 1B. By rule (with exceptions) she cannot be put out between 1B and 2B and if she is I am going to kill the play and award 1B. If she gets put out beyond 1B we have an out!
As you can see there is big difference between these two methods.
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