Knowledge Management for Sustainable Construction: The C-SanD Project

Managing knowledge is becoming more and more important within the construction industry because it is considered critical for the competitiveness of a construction firm. Managing knowledge is particularly important to the construction industry due to the unique characteristics of its projects such as multi-disciplinary teams, temporary team members, heavy reliance on experience, the one-off nature of the projects, tight schedules, limited budget, etc. Many initiatives have been undertaken within the industry itself and in the academic world to develop mechanisms and tools for managing knowledge within a construction firm and on projects. These address issues such as capturing knowledge, storing knowledge, and transferring knowledge. Despite these efforts, there is still very little understanding of the best ways to foster the creation of knowledge, less about how to capture it, and even less about how to ensure that knowledge is readily available to other individuals, project teams, and companies. The C-SanD Project (Creating, Sustaining, And Disseminating Knowledge For Sustainable Construction: Tools, Methods And Architectures) is being undertaken by Loughborough University, the London School of Economics, and Salford University. The aim of the project is to develop, test, and implement software tools which enable the capture and retrieval of relevant knowledge, and to embed these tools in working methods that enable the creation of new knowledge particularly in the area of sustainable construction. This paper presents some initial project findings and discusses the knowledge management issues identified during the case studies undertaken within the project. It highlights that little has been done to create and retain knowledge on sustainable construction. It concludes that there is much to be done in order to manage sustainable construction knowledge within the industry. The C-SanD Project is addressing this current need.