IT in Construction

Knowledge empowerment of employees

Satish Pendse discusses on how information technology can be used as an effective tool for managing and enhancing the knowledge of employees

Construction industry is heavily dependent on experienced human resources. The experiences and insights of the people comprises of knowledge. In this particular article we will discuss how information technology (IT) can be used as an effective tool for managing and enhancing the knowledge of employees.

Necessity and challenges
The construction industry is changing rapidly. The next decade is going to be a decade of tremendous opportunities. The main challenge in front of us is to have enough competent human resources to ride the growth wave.
With availability of abundant opportunities within and outside construction industry, the industry professionals are not averse to leaving the parent company resulting in high attrition. The industry being a knowledge centric-industry, driven by experience of individuals; exodus of employees means exodus of knowledge from the organization and it can hamper the business adversely.
To address these challenges, it is important to gather and retain the knowledge embodied in individuals or embedded in organizational processes. These efforts can play a big role in improved performance, innovation and competitive advantage.
I will try to explain what I mean by knowledge with an example of the project appreciation report. This report contains transactional data (e.g. P.O; Daily Progress Report etc.) which can be effectively captured and managed by a world class ERP system. However there are lots of non-transactional aspects such as best practices, measures for cost curtailment and improvement in employee productivity, geological data and their impact on methodology to be adopted, some of the exceptional situations and how they are handled etc. This knowledge is with the individuals and the team working on that specific project.
The hindrance for gathering knowledge is its abstract nature and it is not always possible to make it available in a tangible manner. Another hindrance can be unwillingness or inability of the experienced professionals to share the knowledge. Even if we take care of these challenges and manage to capture the knowledge, there is a danger of gathering irrelevant data resulting in junk. To address this challenge a strong validation mechanism needs to be in place in the organization which screens the captured data. After gathering the knowledge, its representation in a user friendly manner and effective retrieval is very important for enabling higher user adoption.
Effective mechanism for creation of metadata and keyword based search option can take care of this. Knowledge management itself being a vast topic, we will not get into the details of knowledge management process; however we will try to understand how IT can be a strategic tool for empowering the employees with knowledge.

Digitization of knowledge
As said earlier, construction industry is driven by knowledge of individuals and the main reason for this is the specialized skills required for certain work can be acquired only through experience. Consider functions such as construction budgeting, engineering or project planning which require experienced planning managers.
However with the constraint in getting good resources, it is imperative for us to use the available resources judiciously and at the same time create a knowledge repository which can be used. There is no alternative to IT for doing this effectively.
Let’s take the example of project budget making process. With the help of IT, we can define the rules in the system for regular scenarios. Inexperienced resources can take care of the regular scenarios with the help of the system. While the scenarios which are not adhering to the rules, and hence exceptions are highlighted by the system by alert or warning mechanism.
We can use the time and efforts of the experienced resources judiciously, as we will take help of these resources only in the exceptional cases. Even the reviewer is required to review only the exceptions as standard aspects are being rule driven with the use of IT systems.
There are numerous examples where digitization of knowledge can make a lot of difference. For example, during the tendering stage, pointers pertaining to- topography of the site, productivity utilization norms, methodology adopted and time-cycles; can be the decisive factor between a winning tender and a losing one.
Also, consider the case of claims raised against the tendering contracts. It is important to digitize the knowledge in the arbitration cycle as it can act as a reference guide in future settlements and can be a decisive factor in determining the profitability of the project.

The way ahead
It is important to have effective system in place to identify, create, distribute and enable adoption of knowledge in an effective manner. IT helps in digitizing the knowledge embodied in individuals and embedded in organization’s processes. Digitization can help in using the experienced resources judiciously thus increasing overall productivity and efficiency.
Knowledge enhancement is a responsibility of both the company and employees and IT provides lot of avenues for the same. Knowledge empowerment of employees can play a big role in improved performance, innovation and competitive advantage

Satish Pendse works as the chief information officer for Hindustan Construction Company (HCC), which has started offering IT services to the infrastructure industry. This also includes implementation of the tendering & estimation software. Through this column in Construction Week India, the author brings out the increasing significance of Information Technology in the construction industry. He can be reached on satish.pendse@hccindia.com