Construction competitiveness and knowledge management. Basic considerations

Based on the importance of the construction, stakeholders in this industry should support its competitiveness improvement. However, authors sustain that not all are sufficiently informed about the current challenges, problems and advances regarding this industry and by this reason many valuable knowledge get lost. Understand the existence of different realities about construction, the shortages of information and state of the art is crucial to propose and implement strategies to support practical solutions. As a part of an on-going investigation, this research includes the revision of the nature, significance and challenges faced by the construction and makes reference to competitive policies, lessons learned and sustainable construction while knowledge management is emphasized as a key element to sustain construction competitiveness. Based on documental revision and field work developed with participation of oil and petrochemical construction companies and construction experts, this research present some preliminary results that confirm that there is a breach between construction knowledge available and the construction problems faced by this industry. This evidences that even of the practical knowledge available for the understanding of construction problems, to identify enhancement opportunities and to improve the complex processes related to construction, there is an important recurrence of diverse construction problems both in developed and developing countries. Based on such findings authors sustain that additional efforts must be devoted to permit that the existing knowledge transcend theory and can be used by construction organizations to improve it performance and competitiveness thus contributing to the solution of practical problems for the benefit of society. The presentation of basic information about those issues in practical way in diverse situations and with empirical evidences may facilitate the end-users change of attitude in front of such resources and thus reduce the existing gap between knowledges and construction problems.