A project knowledge management tool for the construction industry

Abstract

Knowledge Management has attracted a lot of attention in the last decade and it has widely been cited as a major competitive tool for many businesses. In the UK construction industry, it has been identifi ed that one third of major clients are dissatisfi ed with contractor and consultant performance. Similarly, the Egan Report [1], ‘Rethinking Constructionʼ, stated that the industry suffers from low and unreliable profi tability, insuffi cient research & development, and a lack of customer focus. These problems in addition to the project based business environment of the sector, typically relate to the industryʼs adversarial nature, and to move forward the industry needs to capture the knowledge that is generated by the project team, share it, and more importantly, determine how it can be reviewed and used by other project teams for future projects. This paper introduces an IT approach, the Process Protocol Toolkit to satisfy the needs in managing knowledge in construction projects based on the Process Protocol framework. The paper also suggests that signifi cant realisation of IT benefi ts can only be achieved by knowledge based systems, which are underpinned by a consistent design and construction .

Keywords knowledge framework. knowledge management, information technology, knowledge based system, construction process, project management