Managing knowledge: a North American perspective

Knowledge has always been one of the most important assets of any business, not least in civil engineering. Effective management of knowledge can thus be vital to an organisation's development, performance and competitiveness—but how formal does the process need to be? This paper looks at how two major North American engineering, procurement and construction businesses manage their technical knowledge and then examines the merits of the different approaches for UK civil engineering organisations, from strategy and implementation to people aspects and performance metrics.