A project knowledge management tool for the construction industry

Knowledge Management has attracted a lot of attention in the last decade and it has widely been cited as a major competitive tool for many businesses. In the UK construction industry, it has been identified that one third of major clients are dissatisfied with contractor and consultant performance. Similarly, the Egan Report [1], 'Rethinking Construction?, stated that the industry suffers from low and unreliable profitability, insufficient research & development, and a lack of customer focus. These problems in addition to the project based business environment of the sector, typically relate to the industry's adversarial nature, and to move forward the industry needs to capture the knowledge that is generated by the project team, share it, and more importantly, determine how it can be reviewed and used by other project teams for future projects. This paper introduces an IT approach, the Process Protocol Toolkit to satisfy the needs in managing knowledge in construction projects based on the Process Protocol framework. The paper also suggests that significant realisation of IT benefits can only be achieved by knowledge based systems, which are underpinned by a consistent design and construction knowledge framework.