Capturing knowledge in construction projects: Knowledge platform for contractors

Date

2008-04-01

Author

Kivrak, Serkan
Arslan, Gokhan
Dikmen Toker, İrem
Birgönül, Mustafa Talat

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

284
views

0
downloads

Managing knowledge effectively is critical to the survival and advance of a company, especially in project-based industries such as construction. However, capturing knowledge in construction projects is a tedious task, as knowledge is usually experience based, tacit, and hard to pass on to others. In this study, a survey was carried out among eight leading Turkish construction contractors that are operating within the international construction market. The specific objectives of this survey are to find out how the tacit and explicit knowledge are captured, stored, shared, and used in forthcoming projects, as well as major drivers and barriers for knowledge management. Based on the survey, it was determined that most of these firms do not have a knowledge management strategy and a systematic way of capturing and storing tacit knowledge. A conceptual framework is proposed to formalize the knowledge-capturing process within construction companies. To demonstrate how the conceptual framework can be implemented in practice, a Web-based system, namely, Knowledge Platform for Contractors (KPfC) is presented. It is hypothesized that KPfC can be used to manage both tacit and explicit knowledge effectively in construction projects.

Subject Keywords

Management Science and Operations Research, General Engineering, Strategy and Management, Industrial relations

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/36621

Journal

JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT IN ENGINEERING

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1061/(asce)0742-597x(2008)24:2(87)

Collections

Department of Civil Engineering, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Integrated framework to investigate value innovations Dikmen Toker, İrem; Birgönül, Mustafa Talat (American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2005-04-01) A conceptual framework has been developed to investigate value innovations within construction companies. A visual metaphor has been defined to model the innovation system where the elements of the model are objectives, strategies, environmental barriers/drivers, and organizational factors. The major idea is that none of the elements of the model alone can explain the innovative capability, and elements as well as their interrelations should be considered concurrently to investigate how the innovation syste...
Collaboration environments for construction: Implementation case studies Erdogan, Bilge; Anumba, Chimay J.; Bouchlaghem, Dino; Nielsen, Yasemin (American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2008-10-01) Although emerging technologies offer the construction industry many opportunities for computer supported collaboration environments, the companies adopting these technologies usually fail in achieving the full benefits from their implementations. The reason for this is found to be focusing too much on the technical factors and ignoring or underestimating the factors related to change, implementation, human and organizational factors, and the roles of the management and end users. Each new information techno...
Using analytic network process to predict the performance of international construction joint ventures Ozorhon, Beliz; Dikmen Toker, İrem; Birgönül, Mustafa Talat (American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2007-07-01) Strategic collaborations such as joint ventures (JVs) have become an important way of exploiting business opportunities for construction companies. However, such entities are difficult to manage due to their composite structures, which entail diverse organizational cultures, styles, and objectives. Therefore, measurement of JV performance has been an interesting research topic although there is no consensus on the definition, measures, and variables of performance yet. Considering the inherent complexities ...
Strategic perspective of Turkish construction companies Dikmen Toker, İrem; Birgönül, Mustafa Talat (American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2003-01-01) Whether extensively planned or not, all companies have a strategic perspective which is analogous to the personality of an individual. However, a clear strategic perspective is a must to achieve strategic integration that further leads to competitive advantage. In order to define a strategic perspective, four determinants should be put together: objectives, strategies; competencies; and competitive rules. There are two way linkages among objectives, strategies, and competencies that are affected from compet...
Exploring the Relationship between Complexity and Risk in Megaconstruction Projects Erol, Huseyin; Dikmen, Irem; Atasoy Özcan, Güzide; Birgönül, Mustafa Talat (American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2020-12-01) © 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.Although complexity and risk are inherent characteristics of megaconstruction projects, existing project management approaches fail to incorporate complexity-based thinking into risk management. Complexity is usually considered as the source of risk events, along with uncertainty. However, prevailing risk management practices are oriented toward only handling the uncertainty. The lack of integration between the complexity and other risk-related concepts leads to un...

Citation Formats

S. Kivrak, G. Arslan, İ. Dikmen Toker, and M. T. Birgönül, “Capturing knowledge in construction projects: Knowledge platform for contractors,” JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT IN ENGINEERING, pp. 87–95, 2008, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/36621.