“Knowledge is power” F. A. Uriarte, Jr, (2008)
In the past knowledge was an important element for many fields, especially political and war fields. It was the main engine for many decisions. By time the strength of knowledge existence increases and the need for managing and sharing knowledge grows and become important element in business competition.
In the construction sector knowledge is essential for project success. The nature of knowledge in construction projects is different, it depends mainly on the learned lessons and the experience of people involved in the project. Managing knowledge in construction projects has become so important in the last few years. Sharing of knowledge process is a very important process in knowledge management, which facilitates the exchanging of project knowledge and improves communication between the project team. It is important to focus on how to manage and share the project information and knowledge specifically in the design phase, where most of the project knowledge is generated.
The proposed framework in this article is integrating the design phase activities and the procedures of knowledge sharing and the success factors of applying it. It is proposing that applying the knowledge sharing success factors at all the design phase activities improve the level of certainty to take better decision and solve design problems which result in, reducing the rework in the design phase. Therefore, this framework is directed to the main design phase stakeholders, to recognize the importance of knowledge sharing and know the required success factors that must be exist in organizations to facilitate knowledge sharing implementation.
There are 13 success factors which affect the knowledge sharing implementation. These factors are a sum of attitudes, activities and procedures that facilitate the flow of knowledge in the design phase to achieve the desired quality of the design process. Schedule 1 shows the 13 success factors divided based on their category, some factors related to individual culture, others to the organization and the KM process itself.
Figure 1 shows the proposed conceptual framework, where it is divided into two major areas. The first one is where the basic design is created and the project elements are studied. The second area is where the procurement of the project is selected and the design team begin to handle the construction documents to the contractor. The framework is designed as following:
- Solid black rectangles are for the major activities in the design phase.
- Solid black diamond shapes are for the key milestones where the decisions are taken in the project.
- Dashed dotted blue rectangles represent the success factors that must be exist through the design activities.
- Dashed green rectangles represent the results of involving the knowledge sharing success factors in the design phase.
- Dotted red rectangles represent the effects of applying knowledge sharing success factors on the design process.
- The four colored shapes represent the stakeholders of the project and their involvement in the different stages of the design phase to facilitate the flow of knowledge and the whole process of design.
The hierarchy of activities lead from schematic and design development to tendering, contract selection and construction supervision. Where the good communication and coordination in the previous stages provides less conflicts in drawings and less rework by the design. This is represented by the number of RFIs that are delivered on the construction documents.