Building on Knowledge

This guide shows design practices and other construction
professionals how to manage knowledge successfully. It explains how
to develop and implement a knowledge management strategy, and how
to avoid the pitfalls, focusing on the techniques of learning and
knowledge sharing that are most relevant in professional practice.
Expensive IT-based 'solutions' bought off-the-shelf
rarely succeed in a practice context, so the emphasis here is on
people-centred techniques, which recognise and meet real business
knowledge needs and fit in with the organisational culture.

Knowledge is supplanting physical assets as the dominant basis
of capital value and an understanding of how knowledge is acquired,
shared and used is increasingly crucial in organisational success.
Most business leaders recognise this, but few have yet succeeded in
making it the pervasive influence on management practice that it
needs to become; that has turned out to be harder than it
looks.

Construction professionals are among those who have furthest to
go, and most to gain. Design is a knowledge-based activity, and
project managers, contractors and clients, as well as architects
and engineers, have always learned from experience and shared their
knowledge with immediate colleagues. But the intuitive processes
they have traditionally used break down alarmingly quickly as
organisations grow; even simply dividing the office over two floors
can noticeably reduce communication. At the same time, increasingly
sophisticated construction technology and more demanding markets
are making effective management of knowledge ever more important.
Other knowledge-intensive industries (such as management
consultancy, pharmaceuticals, and IT), are well ahead in adopting a
more systematic approach to learning and sharing knowledge, and
seeing the benefits in improved technical capacity, efficiency,
customer satisfaction and reduced risk.