Principles and applications of knowledge management for the BC industry (with examples)

T. D.Wilson professor emeritus of University of Sheffield, UK wrote in The Information Research an article »The nonsense of knowledge management« (Wilson, T.D., 2002). In his article T. D.Wilson asks himself what is the difference between knowledge and information and what the definition »knowledge management« might be. So he made a research on the »knowledge management« appearances through various citation indexes from 1981 to 2002, articles, books, schools and even some research on so called »tacit knowledge«.


Introduction
T. D.Wilson professor emeritus of University of Sheffield, UK wrote in The Information Research an article »The nonsense of knowledge management« (Wilson, T.D., 2002). In his article T. D.Wilson asks himself what is the difference between knowledge and information and what the definition »knowledge management« might be. So he made a research on the »knowledge management« appearances through various citation indexes from 1981 to 2002, articles, books, schools and even some research on so called »tacit knowledge«.
In most cases the authors were using »knowledge« simply as a synonym for »information«. In other cases the »knowledge management tool« is nothing but the information about the intellectual resources of a firm. Or they want to re-sell expert systems under a new label. In some cases »knowledge resources« turn out to be information resources and so on.
His conclusion was: »The inescapable conclusion of this analysis of the 'knowledge management' idea is that it is, in large part, a management fad, promulgated mainly by certain consultancy companies, and the probability is that it will fade away like previous fads. It rests on two foundations: the management of information -where a large part of the fad exists (and where the 'search and replace marketing' phenomenon is found), and the effective management of work practices. However, these latter practices are predicated upon a Utopian idea of organizational culture in which the benefits of information exchange are shared by all, where individuals are given autonomy in the development of their expertise, and where 'communities' within the organization can determine how that expertise will be used. Sadly, we are a long way removed from that Utopia: whatever businesses claim about people being their most important resource, they are never reluctant to rid themselves of that resource (and the knowledge it possesses) when market conditions decline. In the U.K. we can point to British Airways, which, in the aftermath of the terrorist attack of the 11th September 2001, paid off more than 7,000 of its 'knowledge resources' -financial observers suggested that they were simply waiting for a suitable excuse to do so, management having taken disastrous business decisions which had reduced profitability. We can also point to Barclays Bank, with profits of more than £2 billion in 2001 and profit growth that year of almost 3.0%, which, nevertheless, paid off some 10% of its total global workforce. No imagination appears to have been used by either of these companies to determine ways in which their 'most important resource' might be more effectively employed to increase turnover and profits.« So, is the term »knowledge management« just another word for information gathering or it is just a commercial term for boosting the economy in the field, because the »knowledge management« is popular that particular moment? His view on the matter is really more cynical. But can we say that information is knowledge or the writers who wrote such articles cannot distinguished between information and knowledge? Or that »knowledge management« is no more than some sort of gathering, organizing, storing and retrieving the information. What exactly is »knowledge management« then?

What is Knowledge Management?
If one asked Google, one would receive about 20 different explanations of the term »knowledge management« in English. There are also several definitions in the Slovene language: Ð »Knowledge management« is a business process one can manage intellectual assets of an organization with. (Slak, M. 2002) Ð »Knowledge management« is a part of human capital portfolio in which companies must invest and constantly take care of. (Drakuli~, I. 2004) One can summarise that »knowledge« involves mental processes in one's mind. These processes are comprehension, understanding and learning. And »management« of »knowledge« on the other hand are activities to gather, store, organize and share that »knowledge« so that organization that collects such »knowledge« can benefit from it.
One must distinguish knowledge from data and information (Zack, M. H., 1999). Data represents just pure facts or observations, not directly connected to anything.
Information on the other hand results from placing data in some context and making the data meaningful. The information can be in a form of a message. Knowledge are those messages that one accumulates and meaningfully organizes through experience, communication or inference. Knowledge can be viewed both as a thing to be stored and manipulated and as a process of simultaneously knowing and acting -that is, applying expertise.
So »knowledge« involves mental processes of comprehension (Wilson, T.D., 2002), understanding and learning that go on in the mind and only in the mind. However they can involve interaction with the world outside the mind, and interaction with others. One can express what one knows, by uttering messages of one kind or another -oral, written, graphic, gestural or even through 'body language'. Such messages do not carry »knowledge«, they constitute »information«, which a knowing mind may assimilate, understand, comprehend and incorporate into its own knowledge structures.
»Knowledge« can be tacit or explicit (Zack, M. H., 1999). Explicit is very precise and formally articulated. Because of that it can be easily codified, documented, shared or manipulated. In organization it can be in a form of procedure manuals, product literature or even in a form of computer software. On the other hand tacit knowledge is developed from direct experience and action, shared through story-telling, shared experience and interactive conversation. It is subconsciously understood and applied and difficult to articulate.
Tacit knowledge by Wilson (Wilson, T.D., 2002) involves the process of comprehension, a process which is, by itself, poorly understood. Consequently, tacit knowledge is an inexpressible process that enables an assessment of phenomena in the course of becoming knowledgeable about the world.
When organization »captures« knowledge it has to manage it or the acquired knowledge will eventually be lost. Knowledge management can be described in many ways as mentioned earlier in the paper. Different organizations understand it differently. For instance U.S. Department of transportations, defines it as »the process of capturing and sharing a community's collective expertise to fulfil its mission.« Knowledge management takes advantage of an organization's most valuable asset -the collective expertise of its employees and partners (Burk, M., 1999). Most organisations involved in knowledge management think that way. Many organizations are not aware of the knowledge possesed by the employees and if an organization wants to explore and harvest that knowledge it should know how.
Knowledge management acts something like a library. It provides a repository for written information on a given subject, but it also tries to make it available to the organization as a whole. The knowledge that is in man's mind may be the most valuable of all because it is put in context and it is frequently more extensive and up-to-date and, therefore, more useful for decision-making. In short, knowledge management helps ensure that the right information gets to the right people at the right time to make the right decision (Burk, M., 1999).
As mentioned earlier the knowledge must be first found or created. This can be done by conferences and meetings, by sharing experience through workshops, seminars, projects and research. The next step would be to organize that know-vol. 17, No. 1-2/06 The forgotten modernism of cities ledge. That task could be done by a person called knowledge manager. The knowledge manager would catalogue and sort every new information that comes into the organization and will also help everyone in that organization to find the needed information. So the knowledge manager would share knowledge with others so that the others could use that knowledge and obtain new knowledge. So the process could start again. That is called the knowledge cycle.

Examples of Knowledge Management in the BC industry
How can BC industry use »knowledge management«? The knowledge is made by people that are inside organizations.
So the logic answer would be that it can be used through employees and that employees are the most valuable asset of any organization. The knowledge must be managed and who could do this best but the assigned people, so called »knowledge managers« or in a case of bigger organizations expert centres or even organizations specialized in knowledge management.
Their responsibilities typically include championing knowledge management, educating the organization, knowledge mapping, and integrating the organizational and technological resources comprising the knowledge management architecture. Additionally, explicit responsibility should be assigned for each stage of refinery and interfaces between them. Assigning responsibility for a seamless transition of knowledge from acquisition to use, as well as interfaces between these stages, all would help ensure that knowledge repositories will be meaningfully created and effectively used (Zack, M. H., 1999). Integrative applications are built around knowledge repository. The repository is a primary medium for knowledge exchange and every user is either a producer or a consu-mer of knowledge and interacts with the repository rather than with each other. A consumer accepts the contents of the knowledge package that is produced through the repository. Such example would be an electronic newsletter, company documents, rules, policies, or directory of employees. On the other hand interactive applications are focused primarily for supporting interactions among people holding tacit knowledge. Here is the repository by product of such interaction rather the primary focus as in integrative applications. Electronic forums are such applications. In forums producers and consumers interact and the results is some sort of a repository filled with questions made by consumers and answers given by producers. The repository can be further linked to electronic publishing applications for editors to discuss the quality of the contributions, or to offer a place for readers to react to and discuss the publication.
Organizations in every field of industry are beginning to grasp the importance of »knowledge management«. This is also true in building and construction industry. There are many examples of usage of »knowledge management« in that field.
One such example is the e-COGNOS project. Its key issues are knowledge management in the construction domain and document interdependencies and consistency across projects and between enterprises.  Dr., et al., 2005) In another example »An explorative study on knowledge management in the architectural practice« Isobel Chong tries to understand how knowledge is managed in a project-based, multi-profession environment. The research findings suggest that the main problems facing architectural practice are the management of tacit project knowledge. The inadequate management of tacit knowledge results in two inter-related problems: loss of project knowledge, and not knowing »who knows what«, which leads to »reinventing a wheel«. ( CHONG, I., 2002) The study case was an architectural firm from London. The firm was still in an early stage of a process to improve its knowledge management practice. In had three main types of knowledge that needed to be managed: first type is a specialist sector knowledge, second a profession (technical) knowledge, and the third one firm specific process knowledge. The firm vol. 17, No. 1-2/06 URBANI IZZIV uses technology mainly to manage explicit knowledge such as the firm specific process knowledge. The first two types were of tacit nature knowledge and thus difficult to manage. The study showed that by employing technology designed to facilitate the social networks and greater staff retention, the problem of managing tacit knowledge could be addressed.
There is another project of Dr.Lima, the so-called eConstruct IST project.

A Case of Practical Application of Knowledge Management (a casestudy) at the Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia
The Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia is a public research organisation, recognised and partly financed by the Slovene government.
The mail fields of activities include methodology on programming urban development, methodology on shaping urban forming, urban geography and sociology, regional economics, applied demography with a regard to town-planning forecasting, comprehensive traffic studies, planning of residential areas, planning of tourist regions, urban renewal, preservation and landscape design, development of GIS, etc. Among objectives are advancement of theoretical research in planning and design, development and evaluation of planning methods and techniques, development and application of planning information systems, development of new activities related to institution building support, education and training of planning students and professionals, implementation of applied research in design projects, publishing, information exchange and documentation of planning literature, transfer of knowledge through consultation activities, etc.
In the field of professional development, the Institute elaborates model plans, standards, norms and planning criteria; it maintains a data-bank, provides information and documentation services; works on terminology and maintains a rich planning library. The Institute is involved in publishing and is educating design and planning professionals. In this way it is able to offer the public an insight into the theoretical and practical findings of its research staff and also a connection between domestic and foreign research and practice in the fields of urban and regional planning and design.
The Institute has 27 professionals working in research and on commissions and 9 in management, administration and support staff. In view of the trans-institutional policy of the Institute, professionals from other organisations are often invited as associates in the Institute's projects. Most of the employees of the Institute are fluent in at least one of the following languages: English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish and the languages of the former Yugoslav republics. The structure of professionals are as follows: ten architects three with Ph.D., four landscape architects two with Ph.D. and one with M.A., four geographers one with Ph.D., two art historians both with Ph.D., one geodesist, one cultural sociologist with Ph.D., one sociologist with M.A., one agronomist, one economist with M.A., one mathematician and one ethnologist.
Upon internal structure the institute is divided into three groups. The main research group, which carried out all the research work, the infrastructure group, with the primary task as support for the research group, and with other tasks as care for various databases, to organize various trainings on the field of usage of new equipment (mainly computer software and hardware), to develop new software for the research group support etc. and administration group. Institute has its own library and information service, which specialised reference services offering literature and vol. 17, No. 1-2/06 The forgotten modernism of cities sources to students and professionals. Integrated into the national information-documentation system and through this into the international flow of information. On-line connection to host systems of the University in Ljubljana and University in Maribor enabling access to several international databases.
The institute has a lot of trained professionals with a lot of knowledge and tacit knowledge. All the research staff constantly undertake in research projects on the state level and also on the international level. They also participate in workshops and they present papers on the national and international conferences. Once a week they have the possibility to broaden their knowledge by taking part in weekly lectures on new computer software or new technology to use.
Every researcher upon finishing the research project is obligated to store a copy of the project in the library. Library then enters data on the project into Co-operative Online Bibliographic System & Service (COBISS) database, and from there it is accessible to every one with an access to the internet. And about there every thing ends. So if anyone wants to learn about projects and materials other researchers did, the only way is to search through COBISS for the files.
That way the knowledge or at least part of it, either explicit or tacit, is definitely lost. On top of that library services only collect research projects that were actually sent to the library. These projects are of course only a tip of iceberg of the knowledge each researcher posseses. So what to do to capture and share all the knowledge that researchers have?
By prof. Dado (Dado, E., 2005) most of the knowledge resources of academic institutions »live« on hard-drives and in personal files of individual researchers. Only a part of these knowledge resources is available through traditional communication channels such as on-line libraries or databases and to some extent through non-interlinked (personal or group) web pages. As it is also true in the Slovene institute. And the possible solution to the problem is to use the portal technology. A portal can be divided into three different types: First one is called »vertical« portal -it provides access to a variety of information and services about a particular area of interest. Such portals offer information and services customized for particular audiences. The second one is »horizontal« portal, which is often referred to as »megaportal.« That kind of a portal targets the entire internet community. Sites such as Lycos.com, Netscape.com and Yahoo.com, are examples of megaportals. These sites always contain search engines and provide the ability for users to personalize the page by offering various channels. Providers of megaportals hope individual users will go to their sites first so as to access the rest of the internet. Their financial models are built on a combination of advertising and »clickthrough« revenues. The last type it the university or enterprise portal, which can be either vertical-focusing on a specific application, such as human resources, accounting, or financial aid information, or horizontal-offering access to almost all the information an individual within the university needs to carry out his or her function. Authentication and access are based upon the role or roles an individual plays in the organization. Horizontal enterprise portals can be customized and personalized. If properly designed, they can replace much of the user's computer desktop.
Portals can also serve in a knowledge management function by dealing with information in an organized fashion. Like in a knowledge cycle, the portal must be able to encompass the following processes: knowledge capturing or creating, knowledge organizing, knowledge processing or sorting, knowledge sharing and using a knowledge. Steffen Staab (STAAB S. at al, 2001) proposes the following: Once a KM system is fully implemented in an organization, knowledge processes essentially circle around the following steps: 1. Knowledge creation and/or import, i.e. contents need to be created or converted such that they fit the conventions of the company, e.g. to the knowledge management infrastructure of the organization; 2. then knowledge items have to be captured in order to elucidate importance or interlinkage, e.g. the linkage to conventionalized vocabulary of the company; 3. retrieval of and access to knowledge satisfies the »simple« requests for knowledge by the knowledge worker; 4. typically, however, the knowledge worker will not only recall knowledge items, but will process it for further use in the context. Knowledge organizing and sorting: At the same time a user imports the knowledge it is also sorted, by putting the document into the right type of library. This can also be done by a third person, the knowledge manager, whose only work is to look after and care for the portal.
Knowledge sharing and usage: SharePoint Team Services are web based services, so if they are on the local intranet or internet (for instance company web pages), they are available to all users who have access to the intranet or internet. The Services also provide the way to notify the users when some data changed via e-mail. And when the event happened, user can read the new document or react on the change.
Capturing the tacit knowledge: One of the service with the SharePoint Team Services is the discussion board system. It is like newsgroup system. The users can pose questions and answers or they can comment documents. And there is another service. It is the survey service. With this service the user can make a survey for other team members. The results can be exported to Microsoft Excel and then presented in a chart form.
Basically the SharePoint Team Services provide all tasks of knowledge management for a small organization. The idea was that every computer in the Institute's internal network (intranet) uses the default page on the web browser the page of the SharePoint Team Services. So every time researchers access internet, they stumble on a default page and indirectly upon different news, reviews, documents, chat etc. on that particular page. Users can open forums to discus research projects, ideas, ask questions, upload own research projects or papers to document folders so that other researchers can use them, learn and broaden their knowledge. The Share-Point Team Services is a good tool for research teams also, because it enables them to use the services schedule tool and therefore schedule the research project, to collect data relevant to the research project in one place.

Conclusions
Knowledge is one of the main assets of every organization. And knowledge is primarily created by people. Some bring their knowledge with them into the organization, they gain knowledge in the organization and some take the knowledge with them, when they leave. It is a resonsability of an organization to secure its knowledge. And the management within the organization should be aware of that and do everything to harvest that knowledge and implement it or invest in it. All that can be achieved with the help of knowledge management, which is one of the most important principles that companies must explore nowadays and use to gain the competitive advantage, even in buildings and construction industry.
The only way to survive is to constantly adapt to the environment, constant growth and constant overtaking the competition. And that we can achieve only with knowledgeand with ability of our employees to think and work better and rapidly than the employees of the competitors. (SLAK M.,2002) The knowledge management system all by itself it is not enough. The employees makes it work. In the case of Urban Planning Institute it was presented to the researcher, but more than a few documents posted into the library and a few announcements presented, nothing happened. At the time that SharePoint Team Service was established, the researchers were not aware that it is knowledge that it's all about and not the SharePoint Team Services. So today no one is using it.
What follows? There are a few possibilities.
First, researcher should be educated or at least follow lectures on knowledge management organized for him. The vol. 17, No. 1-2/06 The forgotten modernism of cities course that would show the benefits and the possibilities of knowledge management for the Institute and for them to use it. Then the course of using the software for knowledge management system researchers would be familiarized with it. The researchers' computers would be set up in a way that the portal web page would be the default web page on entering a browser.
Secondly, the Institute administration and management should be aware of what knowledge management is and its completive advantage. The management is then motivated to encourage researchers and to move the system in motion.
And the third, the knowledge manager should be appointed to take over the system and to further educate the users and to monitor new releases, to also be able to upgrade the system with better services. That is the least what the Slovene Institute should do to ensure the knowledge will stay in the organization and that the organization will benefit from and implement it.