Success Factors for a Lessons-Learned System in a Construction Organization

Knowledge management (KM) has been accepted as a vital component of a corporation's competitiveness. The need for appropriately managing knowledge in the construction industry seems as high as other knowledge-sensitive industries. Construction organizations operate based on projects that are dynamic and intermittent in nature. These require tremendous previous experiences, namely lessons-learned (LL), for successful planning and execution. Recently, intranet technologies have been considered as enablers that can facilitate KM efforts within a construction organization by offering a networked environment for better knowledge exchanges. However, if an intranet-based LL system is not well designed from the outset, it cannot satisfy various knowledge needs, but can only expedite the exchanges of mere data and information. The purpose of this article is to suggest critical success factors for an LL management system, which is primarily operated on an intranet, for large construction organizations. First, a general LL framework is developed to identify the position of lessons-learned in a general knowledge management context and to incorporate offline-efforts into an online-based system. Three lower levels of conceptual models for system components are then developed, which will be incorporated into an overall LL system. Finally, success factors for both designing and implementing an LL management system are summarized.