Knowledge Management

Author: David Hurst | March 15, 2021

Good architects, engineers and designers aren’t born; they’re made. Over the course of their careers, they make design decisions and subsequently learn from them. As a result, their decision-making almost always improves. In contrast, an organization’s collective decision-making doesn’t always improve. Instead, it rises as architects, engineers and designers learn and degrades as they leave. To improve organizations’ decision-making quality, managers should search for ways to capture and leverage experience. Therein lies the genesis of Knowledge Management, which is a strategy to capture explicit and tacit design knowledge for reuse.

DEFINING KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Knowledge Management (KM) comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute and enable adoption of insights and experiences. Such insights and experiences are comprised of knowledge, either embodied in individuals, or embedded as processes or practices in organizations.

Source: Wikipedia

In the context of architecture, engineering and design, there are several specific applications of Knowledge Management.

Decision Making Traceability: One such application is the documentation of design decisions, regarding both the sequence of events and the rationale behind each decision. This provides a decision-making audit trail for future use, even if the responsible individual has left the organization. Good examples of this are project schedules and meeting minutes.
Developing and Distributing Design Guidance: Another application of Knowledge Management is to assess the basis for design decisions, whether they are internal or external, and generalize these into guidance. To do so, architects, engineers and designers need to collaborate to define this guidance. As a result, future generations can leverage the collective advice of their predecessors.
Specialized Information: This application focuses on the access and exchange of information about specific design domains. This type of knowledge has traditionally been provided through engineering standards or technical references. Access to these kinds of standards and references has undergone a revolution in recent years, providing engineering organizations easier pathways to validated information.

CHALLENGES ADDRESSED BY KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

There are many different facets of Knowledge Management, each providing different advantages. The pursuit of Knowledge Management directly addresses several trends that are shaping modern architecture, engineering and design.

Trend	Challenge Addressed	Advantage Provided
Profitable Growth and Staffing	Managers must maintain consistency and throughput despite the differences across global technical centers and the addition of new team members.	Designated sources of knowledge allow the manager to reference a single source of truth for decisions, regardless of location.
The Expanding Role of the Modern Technical Manager	Managers must maintain their technical skills, while at the same time improving their soft skills.	Building out a centrally accessible source of knowledge allows team members to improve, as well as continually refreshing their skills and knowledge.
The Coming War for Engineering Talent	Managers must find a way to mitigate the brain drain threat from retiring Boomers.	Managers can capture knowledge of their most experienced team members and mentor the less experienced. When these individuals leave, the organization will then have continuity in the knowledge base.

We often see emails looking for someone with specific experience to assist with a projector proposal. This is an example of knowledge sharing/management where we need to leverage our collective experience to advance the company’s objectives.

While working remotely, we occasionally have the opportunity to view our co-workers working in Excel, or Word, or AutoCAD; and see them use something like “Right-Click”, “Copy”, Right-Click”, “Paste”, “Right-Click”, “Paste”... Instead of dragging the plus sign in the corner of the cell. Often, we hold back on commenting...we don’t want to criticize our coworker’s skills or boast of our superior knowledge. But, if we have knowledge of a shortcut or more efficient use of that software, we should share that knowledge.

Sharing our knowledge speaks directly to our core value Continuously Improving; We are One Middough!