Blogs as a Knowledge Tool in a Construction Company

“Blogs as a knowledge tool in a construction company”

Information and knowledge

Knowledge is a critical part of the way a company functions and its success depends a lot on it. When the individuals, and the company as a whole, possess valuable knowledge of the resources, processes, new technologies, its rivals’ situations, customers’ desires and needs they can deliver in a much more sufficient way. The same applies in construction companies. Gaining and generating valuable knowledge is one of the most important company’s capabilities, though very few take full advantage of. That is why a management consultant that is retained by a construction company, which is about to bid for a major project as part of the Thames Gateway development, should advice it to put effort and try to enhance this area (Holtham).

There are four steps in the process of making knowledge. First of all comes the data, which is available to everyone and it comes from everywhere. Especially today there is an “explosion of data” from a significant number of resources (television, radio, the Press, the Internet, colleagues, friends etc) and it can be either ‘hard”- when it is “structured and objective” (e.g. facts, numbers) - or “soft”- when it is” unstructured and subjective” (e.g. people’s opinions). Data is then processed by each individual and is converted into information, which can be also either hard or soft. A point that requires attention at this level is that most companies deal with hard data in order to convert it into hard information- which of course is pretty important- but they ignore soft data and information- which is required for all the difficult and important issues (e.g. creating a new strategy, improving customers’ service). The consultant should focus on this point and find a way to emphasize in soft data-information as well. Also another critical point that requires the consultant’s attention is the fact that the creation of information is reducing due to data’s explosion, since people do not know where to focus; so the consultant should find a way to control the data’s explosion in order to increase the creation of information. Next each individual by his own, as well as the company as a whole, browses the pieces of information from the previous step and results in obtaining knowledge, which can be either “explicit”- when it is fully identified and stored- or “tacit”- when is difficult to transfer and as a result it remains private. Tacit knowledge is very neglected by companies, and therefore they operate by considering just half of what they should; so the consultant should pay attention at this point as well. Finally the last step is to process the knowledge