Knowledge Management in Construction Projects

Abstract

Knowledge is now becoming the most valuable asset of the construction organisations to gain competitive advantages by improving quality while reducing cost and time of work completion in projects. Knowledge Management (KM) is the most effective way to deal with the intellectual capital of the organisations through facilitating the capturing and sharing of existing knowledge and creating new innovative knowledge. The most useful knowledge in construction projects is tacit knowledge since it includes the people ideas, perceptions and experiences that can be shared and re-used to improve experiences and enhance abilities of employees for problem-solving and decision-making. Many of methods have been adopted to deal with knowledge in the construction organisations, but they are still far from enough, particularly in dealing with tacit knowledge gained from construction projects. This paper presents a methodology for dealing with tacit knowledge efficiently and effectively in construction projects. A case study has been conducted to evaluate the proposed KM method and to test its importance and usefulness in the construction industry.