Technical Knowledge Consolidation using Theory of Inventive Problem Solving
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 131, Issue 9
Abstract
Technical knowledge is a valuable asset for construction companies. The diversity and accumulation of such knowledge on an organizational level contribute to company profitability and growth. This paper discusses a new approach for extracting, consolidating, and then retrieving technical construction knowledge that builds on the contradiction resolution concepts of the theory of inventive problem solving. The approach was used to extract knowledge from a number of lessons learned describing technical construction problems encountered by a major construction company. The approach depends on finding the similarities between technical solutions of problems that belong to different technological domains. These similarities represent the essence of these solutions and are represented using domain-independent terms so that they can be applied to new problems. The outcomes of the knowledge extraction and accumulation process are discussed in the paper to address the feasibility of the proposed approach and its potential benefits and limitations.
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Acknowledgments
This framework was developed with the cooperation of the NSERC/Alberta Construction Industry Research Chair in Construction Engineering Management. This work was funded by a number of Alberta construction companies and by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada under Project No. NRCCRDPJ 249188-01, “Production-based framework for construction planning and execution.”
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 131 • Issue 9 • September 2005
Pages: 993 - 1001
Copyright
© 2005 ASCE.
History
Received: Jan 30, 2003
Accepted: Jun 10, 2004
Published online: Sep 1, 2005
Published in print: Sep 2005
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