Effective Methods and Learning Environment for Retaining Cost Estimating Knowledge and Skills

Recent studies have shown that 80% of the baby boomer generation who have critical "know-how" and "how-to" knowledge and skills will be retiring within the next 10 years. Also the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) predicts a significant shortfall of engineers in the next decades. In many companies, the retirement of the senior employees basically translates into the retirement of their years of experience and knowledge as most companies do not have well planned strategies and methods to retain the knowledge and skills of their retiring employees. Decades of downsizing and outsourcing management practices also have exacerbated this problem. There have been rich research efforts outside the construction industry on the importance of knowledge management (KM) which emphasizes the collection and managed sharing of knowledge within the organization. Furthermore, learning organization concepts as an evolved framework from KM have been established as dynamic and effective environments for proactively capturing, sharing, disseminating, and retaining knowledge and skills. This study investigates the effectiveness of the methods used to retain cost estimators' knowledge and skills and evaluates the significant effect of the organizational learning environment in promoting the continuity of learning, and knowledge and skills development. The Structural Equation Modeling method (SEM) was employed to investigate and assess the causal relation between the learning environment provided and the retention methods used. The findings of this study will significantly improve engineering and construction companies' practices in retaining cost estimators' knowledge and skills, and help companies adapt a healthy learning environment that can facilitate learning and sustain knowledge transfer.