INTEGRATION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND
E-LEARNING MANAGEMENT FOR CONSTRUCTION
COMPANIES
N. Forcada, M. Casals, M. Gangolells and X. Roca
Department of Construction Engineering, Technical University of Catalonia, C/Colom 11, Edifici TR-5, Barcelona, Spain
Keywords: Knowledge Management, e-learning, construction companies.
Abstract: Knowledge and learning are the basis for the development of whatever business activity. There are plenty of
knowledge management tools and also e-learning management tools. Basically, they are separated
initiatives and their approach is specific to the targets of each particular area. The main problem is the
inexistence of a common language which difficults the exchange of experiences and information. This paper
describes the background and methodology to integrate a Knowledge Management Strategy (KMS) for a
construction company and an e-learning management system. Two central objectives structure this Paper:
1. To identify categories of important information generated and shared between knowledge management
and e-learning;
2. To integrate vast amounts of contents from diverse repositories created in several KM systems as well as
e-learning platforms by implementing “Concept Indexes” for tagging contents.
1 INTRODUCTION
Currently there are a lot of projects concerning
architecture and e-learning. In addition to these
projects, universities, companies and other parties
have created databases for architectural content and
have, in some instances, started to enrich them with
metadata.
Despite the numerous e-learning platforms, there
are still some gaps to fill in.
On the other hand, construction companies need
that they employees are aware of the new
methodologies, new materials, new techniques, and
sometimes use e-learning to foster these objectives.
Moreover, what companies really need is to share
and exchange the day to day knowledge.
Knowledge Management (KM) is not a new
concept but there are still many problems to solve.
Experience shows that there are not only
difficulties in capturing, storing, sharing and re-
using knowledge in the construction sector,
assuming that it exists, but much of it is never
“produced”, since no mechanisms or processes exist
to foster the social interaction required to give any
shape or form to it. (Shelbourn et al, 2006).
2 OBJECTIVE
This paper describes the background and
methodology to integrate a Knowledge Management
Strategy (KMS) for a construction company and an
e-learning management system.
Two central objectives structure this Paper:
 To identify categories of important information
generated and shared between knowledge
management and e-learning,
 To integrate vast amounts of contents from diverse
repositories created in several KM systems as well
as e-learning platforms by implementing “Concept
Indexes” for tagging contents.
This paper aims to give a general and conceptual
vision of the importance of the knowledge in the
new business and technological scenarios and to
provide means to apply systematically, knowledge
methods and procedures to guarantee its creation,
storage and distribution.
483
Forcada N., Casals M., Gangolells M. and Roca X. (2007).
INTEGRATION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND E-LEARNING MANAGEMENT FOR CONSTRUCTION COMPANIES.
In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Society, e-Business and e-Government /
e-Learning, pages 483-486
DOI: 10.5220/0001268204830486
Copyright
c
 SciTePress

3 APPROACH AND METHODS
The current literature on KM and e-learning allowed
the authors to formulate a method for achieving their
research objectives:
 A thorough and critical review of the literature on
KM systems for construction projects was
conducted.
 A thorough and critical review of the literature on
e-learning tools for construction was conducted.
 A methodology to integrate vast amounts of
contents from both systems was defined.
4 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Managing construction knowledge not only
contributes to increased safety and improved
stability but also saves time spent in design and
construction and provides scope for innovation.
Time can be saved, for example, by reducing the
number of design cycles or by reducing the time
used for searching for knowledge. Therefore, there is
a need for an approach that facilitates knowledge
sharing within the construction industry (Al-
Ghassani, 2006).
4.1 Limitations of Current KM
Approaches
The main limitations of the current approaches
managing knowledge are:
 A lot of important knowledge in the construction
sector resides in the minds of the individuals (Al-
Ghassani, 2006).
 People don’t find necessary to share their
knowledge.
 Employees are drowned with the day to day work
and don’t have time to store and index knowledge.
 Many decisions are often not recorded or
documented.
 Construction knowledge takes many forms, for
example: experiences, best practices, lessons
learned, drawings, documents, etc.
 The knowledge is often poorly organised. Then,
it’s difficult to disseminate it.
 People frequently move from one project to
another, and when looking for a piece of information
is difficult to track people who were involved in a
recorded decision.
 Competitivity is the basis of the majority of the
companies so they want to improve their internal
benefits by improving KM but they don’t want to
share knowledge or information with other
companies.
New approaches to the management of
knowledge within companies imply major changes
in individual roles and organisational processes.
There are many approaches to KM. The
approach taken by Demarest (1997) argues that
knowledge is embedded within the organization not
just through individual actors or explicit
programmes, but also through social interchange.
The main challenge of KM still lies within the
lack of a standardized methodology to create and
transmit information and the inefficiency of the
information flow from different sources.
Organizations therefore need a tool that helps
tracking KM and a strategy that helps employees
believe in knowledge sharing and exchanging.
The suggested remedy for this inefficiency and
the aim of this paper is to create a tool to improve
KM in construction companies.
Therefore, it is important that construction
professionals give meanings to fragments of speech
or writing that are impenetrable to outsiders for
reasons that go beyond a lack of understanding of
technical terminology (Shelbourn et al, 2006).
5 E-LEARNING
Many research projects and many education
programs are currently being developed.
A study of e-learning in continuing vocational
training, particularly at the workplace, with
emphasis on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)
(Directorate general for Education and Culture,
2005) concluded that it is hard to find representative
information on e-learning in SMEs. The conclusion
was that learning at SMEs is informal by nature
rather than formal.
Developing the own training materials would be
the best solution to integrate KM in the learning
paths. However, the normal method and the most
economical way of accessing courses is to pay to an
external company for this service (European Centre
for the Development of Vocational Training, 2006).
5.1 Limitations of Current e-Learning
Approaches
The main limitations of the current e-learning
approaches for SMEs are:
 There is still low level of IT skills.
 Broadband is still not available to all the
population via a land line.
 There is no link between different authoring tools
and management systems.
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6 INTEGRATION
A combination between KM and e-learning is the
key to approach knowledge sharing within the
construction industry.
Educational offers in a company should be based
on the real and necessary knowledge of the firm i.e.
the knowledge created by the other employees of the
company. The other basic training can be obtained
from external courses.
7 PROTOTYPE DEVELOPMENT
With the aim to improve the management of
information, knowledge and learning methodologies
a system is defined.
The system will be based on a European Project
called Web-based Intelligent Design and Tutoring
System (WINDS, 2005).
The aim of the proposed system is to take
advantage of WINDS system and improve it to be
used for the KM of construction companies.
System prototype.
To define the learning necessities of each
employee, necessary skills and knowledge should be
defined and related to the learning strategy.
The high level layer are all the employees,
whatever its position and location, who should
create the company’s knowledge.
What is really important in this KM system is to
define all the relations between the different layers,
from the professional profiles, through the
competences and skills to the educational offer.
In some specific areas an employee would be the
creator of information and in some other areas he
would be the student who will use the information
material.
The system is based on contents wich are made
up of information units (IU) which are the basic
learning objects (LO). An IU is made up of text and
iconic objects (pictures, animations, videos).
LO have to fulfil several purposes.
 to be the basis for a consistent content generation
by authors/users
 to allow reusability of LO
 to allow for a maximum of flexibility for the
dynamic generation of online information
The system will allow users to be as much active
in the e-learning content production and the
implementation of a content editing chain.
It will also allow learning in a semantically
controlled environment and support concept creation
and meaning construction through concept
embedding and concept space navigation, the
“Concept Index”. By defining relations between LO
and content descriptors (i.e. concepts) it is possible
to combine these two levels of description.
The Concept Index will automatically create the
course index when the knowledge is created, and it
will automatically index files that are uploaded, as
far as automatically indexing is possible.
A graphical concept map will allow the
navigation of the information concept space.
Between all LO basic relations can be specified
by the authors/users. These will include prerequisite
relations, is_part_of, and is_related_to relations
between course units, learning units, and learning
elements.
8 RESULTS
This system is still being developed but in the near
future a prototype will be created and evaluated in a
Spanish construction company.
It is expected that this system will improve not
only the KM of the company but also the willingness
of all the employees to have at their disposal a
system for continuous training for exchanging
knowledge created by/for their colleagues.
The integration of KM and e-learning systems is
expected to:
 Improve and facilitate the processes of creation
and divulgation of knowledge.
 Identify who has the knowledge and/or the
experience.
 Analyse how to manage the property of this
knowledge and/or experience.
 Promote the flow of knowledge and experiences.
 Analyse the types of knowledge or information
that should be shared and define the methods to be
used to share this information.
Civil
Engineer
S&H
coordinator
HVAC
engineer
Project
Manager
1
2
3
1- PROFESSIONAL PROFILE
2- LAYER OF KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS
3- LAYER OF EDUCATIONAL OFFER
Figure 1: Shows how and from where to create this
learning paths.
INTEGRATION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND E-LEARNING MANAGEMENT FOR CONSTRUCTION
COMPANIES
485

 Define the areas and information of the company
susceptible to include in the KM and e-learning
system.
 Avoid creating existing knowledge.
 Define criteria to store, search and organisation of
knowledge depending on their interrelations.
 Provide a tool to find the information easily and
with as much detail as possible.
 Define the necessary knowledge of a company.
The necessary knowledge of a company might not
be same for another one.
 Identify the areas and processes of a company
where the implantation of a KM system might
provide a continuous improvement.
 Provide a dynamic system with the final objective
of searching improvement actions.
 Make possible the interrelation and application of
KM with other systems such as Information
Management, Document Management, Quality
Management, etc.
9 CONCLUSIONS
KM and e-learning are closely related. The
integration of a “Concept Index” for knowledge and
e-learning management can improve both areas.
In this e-learning and KM system, the creator of
the information/knowledge is also the user/student,
depending on the type of information/knowledge he
already has and the need of information/knowledge.
This duality promotes the involvement of all
employees of a company in creating knowledge.
Currently, the majority of the knowledge is
shared in face-to-face interactions but what is
intended with this system is that it can be converted
into codified knowledge to give access to the whole
employees with the aim to achieve the objectives of
the company: increasing benefits.
Concluding, it is necessary to codify the basic
knowledge which currently exists because it is
stored in different sources such as persons, project
stories, documentation, etc. All employees should
spend much time capturing knowledge and the
whole management of the company should focus on
giving incentives to all the employees who generate
knowledge and codify it.
Moreover, the individuals and organisational
culture should change. Employees should have the
willingness to share knowledge and time for that. On
the other hand, organisations should change their
processes to allow employees have time for that and
give rewards to the employees for generating
knowledge.
REFERENCES
Al-Ghassani A., Kamara J., Anumba C., Carrillo P.,
(2006) Prototype System for Knowledge Problem
Definition, Journal of Construction Engineering and
Managmeent, 132:5 (516)
Directorate general for Education and Culture (2005) E-
learning in continuing vocational, particularly at the
workplace, with emphasis on Small and Medium
Enterprises. Copyright European Commission. Final
Report (EAC-REP-003)
http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/programmes/elea
rning/doc/studies/vocational_f_en.pdf
European Centre for the Development of Vocational
Training, (2006) A preliminary study on the current
state of e-learning in lifelong learning. Cedefop
Panorama series; 123 Luxembourg:, ISBN TI-73-06-
914-EN-N, ISSN 1562-6180
Shelbourn M., Bouchlaghem D., Anumba Ch., Carillo P.,
Khalfan M., Glass J. (2006), Managing knowledge in
the context of sustainable construction,
http://itcon.org/2006/4
WINDS (2005), Web based intelligent design system.
RT&D Project from the IST 5th Framework Work
Programme. http://winds.gmd.de
Figure 2: Examples of interrelation between the “Concep
t
Index” and different e-learning screens. Source: WINDS
prototype.
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