Almarshad, A; Motawa, I and Ogunlana, S (2010) Knowledge management for public building maintenance in Kuwait. In: Egbu, C (ed.) Proceedings of 26th Annual ARCOM Conference, 6-8 September 2010, Leeds, UK.
Abstract
The concept of knowledge management (KM) has been introduced to organizations in various industries to improve their performance. In the construction and building sector, companies seek innovative concepts to cope with economic and competitive pressures and to deal with complex projects. Even with the lack of competitive environment, public organizations have also been introduced to KM to cope with tight budgets and to answer calls for improvement of services. In the case of Kuwait, issues such as loss of gained knowledge, repetition of mistakes and reinventing the wheel in dealing with problems can lead to preventable additional expenses and time wastage. Several IT and KM applications were introduced into facilities management (FM) and building maintenance (BM) services to improve the performance of organizations. This paper presents a methodology to implement KM concept into management of public maintenance departments in Kuwait. The objectives include investigating the current attitudes towards KM, mapping main organizational process for maintenance and lastly developing a KM system for public building maintenance. The main output of this paper is an outlined organizational process showing several opportunities for managing knowledge that will increase the effectiveness of BM process.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | building maintenance; knowledge management; Kuwait; public sector |
| Index terms: | public sector, building maintenance, complex project, facilities management, knowledge management, public building, methodology, mapping, Kuwait, effectiveness |
| Subjects: | construction type, strategic project management, professional development, Geography, spatial and geospatial analysis, research methods, performance management, management, administrative law |
| Topics: | Construction Technology, Business Strategy, Geographical Context, Project Management, Research Practice, Information Management, Legal Issues, Quality Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here