Km case study in construction

Knowledge management in construction sites: a comparative case study
Francisco Loforte Ribeiro, Instituto Superior Técnico, DECivil, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049001 Lisboa, Portugal, email: loforte@civil.ist.utl.pt

Abstract
Construction firms all over the world are increasingly being challenged by high cost pressure, shortened project cycles and increasing competition. Within a businessenvironment, where the fast and reliable access to knowledge is a key success factor, an efficient handling of the organisational knowledge is crucial. Construction firms need to be aware of the advantages of knowledge management initiatives and practices. Each project provides a unique experience regarding knowledge and expertise. Knowledge management (KM) requires an environment that allows workers tocreate, capture, share, and leverage knowledge to improve performance. Firms are increasingly utilizing interdisciplinary organizational structures in which employees share knowledge and expertise within and between groups in order to cope with complex tasks. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the knowledge management effort set up in three cases studies of construction companies. Itpresents the findings from these case studies from the perspective of the construction firm. Keywords: Construction, case study, firm, knowledge management

1. Introduction
In today’s construction market, ensuring business margin is simply harder to achieve. Competition keeps margins thin and projects become more complex. As knowledge is taking on a key business role a growing number of firmsare expecting their knowledge management to be performed in order to transform corporate knowledge into competitive advantage. Therefore, the core of the construction organisation is currently moving from capital intensive towards becoming knowledge intensive (Ribeiro, 2006). With the advent of knowledge economy, knowledge itself has become not only a strategic asset but also the main source oforganisational competitive predominance (Adenfelt and Lagerstrom, 2006). However, effective knowledge management (KM) should be able to support the core tasks of project management, including decision making, planning, control, and production (Yim et al., 2004).

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As knowledge is taking on an important strategic role numerous firms are expecting their project management tasks to be performedeffectively in order to leverage and transform the knowledge into competitive advantages (Desouza, 2003). Liao (2002) stated that the knowledge derived from projects is the intangible resource for solving problems, creating core competitiveness, and initiating new situations for both individuals and organizations now and in the future. KM in construction is about managing organization’sknowledge assets to fulfill its organizational objectives. Thus, KM should enhance individual, group and organizational learning; improve information circulation; and even support innovation. Therefore, a KM system in construction is seen as a means of identifying and exploiting corporate individual knowledge assets: individual experiences, lessons learned, and best practices (Whetherill et al., 2002;Mohamed and Anumba 2005). Knowledge associated with previous construction projects success and failure, services, customers and products are resources that can produce a long-term and sustained competitive advantage for construction organizations (Newcombe, 1999; Ribeiro, 2005). Each project provides a unique experience regarding knowledge management. While project organisations have become common,the KM of construction project organisations is still largely underdeveloped. Enabling sharing and reuse of project knowledge and experience and finding ways to make such knowledge useful to enhance project cost and schedule performance is a key challenge. This paper points out the importance of managing project knowledge and experiences. It investigates the current problems that occur on the...