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best practices and internal knowledge, in order to understand what [organizations] know
and where [the knowledge] is. The process must explicitly address sharing and under-
standing of those practices by motivated recipients. Finally, the process involves
helping the recipients adapt and apply those practices to new situations, to create new
‘knowledge’ and put it into action” (O’Dell et al., 1998).
Tayweb is Taylor Woodrow’s intranet, which carries users to any one of seven
portals as detailed previously. Technical Service News is an electronic, interactive
publication summarising the latest technical innovations, legislation, and best practice
and is available in the Knowledge Share portal on Tayweb. This provides access to Taylor
Woodrow’s in-house technical helpline, to online British standards, construction
information, online health and safety standards, and provides links to external Web sites
for weather information and industry best-practice examples via the Internet. It is also
e-mailed on a monthly basis to technical staff.
The Technical Help Desk (THD) is a facility through which the company’s Tech-
nology Centre offers its specialist technical expertise. Frequent analyses of inquiries to
the THD are used to generate Top Tips (technical guidelines), which demonstrate what
lessons have been learnt and what innovations have been introduced, both of which
constitute new organizational knowledge. In addition, the queries to the THD will also
generate seminars and workshops for training purposes (note here that engineers and
surveyors who are members of professional bodies such as the Institute of Building and
Civil Engineering, or the Institute of Chartered Surveyors, are required by their profes-
sional bodies to do a certain number of continual professional development hours per
year in order to maintain their qualification).
An important part of the tendering process for projects includes risk assessment
and the KM system is a vital source of both technical and historical data that project
managers need to access to discover what has been done in the past, and what are the
current best practices. In addition, as the managers on construction project sites have
laptops issued and the project managers for homes building operate from a regional office
with computer access, they will also have access to these technical guidelines. Site general
foreman tend not to have computers and so phone for information, their knowledge
requirement is part of their social network — they need to know who to phone for help.
Site Setup is primarily an information portal and is an interactive guidance tool the
purpose of which is to assist a project manager in setting up a new construction site. At
this one-stop shop, project managers have links to external Web sites for other
organizations such as the police service, the fire brigade, and the local authority. In
addition to the company’s own procedures, the site provides a checklist of actions
required for sites being newly established as well as a yellow pages of people contacts.
There is also a repository of standard forms and business stationery. The intranet also
contains organizational structures, what the company’s departments do, project profiles,
and so forth.
Although Figure 1 shows only one portal through which a secure Web site can be
accessed, there could be several. Taylor Woodrow establishes these extranets on a
project-specific basis for blue-chip clients such as airports and supermarkets. These are
vortals, collaborative project Web sites bounding virtual communities of practice, which
are live for the duration of each contract. These vortals confer all the advantages of
electronic document management repositories but with additional benefits deriving from
Internet access. Each community member has available a directory of teams, a repository