A Company
Knowledge Management Problem Identified
One of the main problems for the company was that, while
there were some systems already in operation, there was evidence that these were
not functioning as ideally intended and that there was further scope for
improvement. Such examples include the commonly found repeating design problems.
Design problems encountered in an area of a project can often be similar to
those on a project completed several years earlier. At the company in this case,
one such incident was when both projects were in the same market sector and were
run from the same office. Site engineers from the earlier project had identified
the problems in a 'semi-official' post-project report, but this appears not to
have been circulated to all the designers, or to have been readily accessible by
the company employees who would benefit from the knowledge. If this can happen
in the same office, the chances of this repeatedly happening throughout the
large, multi-location company were high. One solution to this problem is to
introduce a global information sharing system that allows all project-based
documents to be shared across multiple offices, with an inbuilt coding system to
facilitate understanding of updates and how these changes subsequently affected
the project.
Another avenue for companies, particularly in technical knowledge
management, is to develop standards, such as drawings, specifications, design
methodologies, calculations, spreadsheets, checklists, and so forth.
Traditionally these kinds of documents, which are used on most projects: (i) are
frequently developed by editing comparable documents from a previous project,
(ii) are normally directed only at the current project, and (iii) are usually
kept only in the project files, including archived 'as-builts.' The problems
with this usual approach include: the new document draws primarily on the
knowledge contained in the document from the previous project from which it was
derived. It may well miss out on certain knowledge that was omitted from that
base document, or was identified on some other project; there is inconsistency
in document format, style, and content between different projects; or there is
wasted effort in reinventing the wheel on one project when the knowledge may
already reside elsewhere. To avoid this, companies can identify specific areas
relevant to a discipline for which standard (non-project-specific) documents
would be of benefit; it is then possible to collate the accumulated knowledge of
many projects in one accessible repository. The in-house standard documents can
be developed alongside a fee-paying project, so that the maximum benefit is
obtained. The extra cost to the organisation to make the documents
‘standardised' for use on future projects is then relatively small. Since these
documents are ‘living', they must be updated to reflect the evolving knowledge
of the organisation. A relevant specialist, or a nominated party, can be the
means of accomplishing this, based on feedback from the entire organisation.
This approach is seen to be of particular benefit in
capturing project-generated knowledge, particularly feedback from the
construction and commissioning phases of projects- at this stage the
project-specific drawings are typically updated to ‘as-built' status, but other
design-phase documentation is frequently not. For example, the installation
specification used on a project is not normally retrospectively revised based on
a deficiency identified during on-site installation or commissioning. Having a
'living' document outside of the project-specific arena allows this to happen
much more easily.