Case Studies in Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management in a Project Climate 133

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Whilst the KM manager sees herself as a facilitator within the company, Taylor
Woodrow has developed and implemented an IT-enabled infostructure called Tayweb
for the distribution of organizational knowledge. There are seven main areas that Tayweb
supports. These are as follows:

1. One Company – company information;


2. News;


3. People – HR and training;


4. The Way We Work – processes;


5. Knowledge Share;


6. Central Services;


7. Office Zone – information on regional offices.

The Knowledge Share portal of Tayweb can usefully be modelled in terms of a
subway metaphor as shown in Figure 1.
This subway operates continuously beneath Taylor Woodrow’s business opera-
tions supporting the enterprise and its business strategies. In this activity, it is
analogous to a computer program constantly running in the background behind other
applications. The model, however, only represents the KM system in a single plane,
which belies its complexity as it functions in a multidimensional space having a form more
like a bowl of spaghetti (Kolind, 1996). The company utilised an eight-step knowledge
transfer model (O’Dell, Greyson, & Essaides, 1998) in order to inform the design of its KM
system. This involved “focusing on creating, identifying, collecting and organizing

Figure 1. Taylor Woodrow’s IT-enabled KM system – Tayweb

TRAINING & INFORMATION

PROGRAMMES

MEETINGS SCHEDULESSOCIAL EVENTS

NEWS &

INFORMATION

EDM ARCHIVE

DRAWINGS

REPOSITORY

EXTRANET

SECURE PROJECT

SPECIFIC WEBSITE(S)

EXTERNAL

ACCESS

TECHNICAL

SERVICE NEWS

TECHNICAL

HELPLINE

BSI ON-LINE

BUSINESS SPECIFIC

INFORMATION

SERVICES

H&S ON-LINE

EXTERNAL WEATHERSERVICEINTERNET

EXTERNAL BESTPRACTICE EXAMPLES

TECHNICAL

HELPDESK

CORPORATE

R&D

TOP TIPS INFORMATION

CENTRE

EXTERNAL WEB

SITE LINKS SITE SET-UP

COMPANY PROCEDURES

LISTSACTIONCONTACTSPEOPLE & LETTERSSTANDARD FORMS

BI-DIRECTIONAL

FLOWS OF

INFORMATION &

KNOWLEDGE

EXTRANET

SECURE PROJECT SPECIFIC WEBSITE(S) (^)