Managing knowledge through effective sharing among construction design team members

Construction is regarded as a knowledge-intensive industry, in which many problem-solving activities involve expertise knowledge from a number of different disciplines. As such, construction would be susceptible immensely to the development of knowledge management aspects; especially in design teams, where new knowledge is created through accumulation of different disciplined knowledge. The identification and improvement of current status of knowledge sharing (KS) culture in design teams, therefore, are immensely important. However, it is rare to find the researches on this area in the particular context and especially in Sri Lankan industry. Hence, the research study on which this paper is based on aimed to investigate how knowledge is shared in construction design teams in Sri Lanka. The research method of this study adopted interpretive paradigm and the research problem was approached through five case studies. These cases were selected from both geographically dispersed and in-house design teams. The principle data collection technique used was semi-structured interviews. Content analysis and cognitive mapping techniques were used to analyze the collected data. The findings of the case studies revealed that there are a number of enablers for KS in design teams such as common goals and collaborative working. Even though there were very few constraints, the study revealed that K5 is not performed to its maximum effect by construction design team members. Hence, the study recommended some appropriate tools and techniques for effective KS in the context.