| dc.description.abstract | The know-how and skills in the construction industry have been inherited through an unknown process in centuries. Similar mistakes have to be corrected repeated in time-space cross-sections due to the lack of proper knowledge management industry-wide. The benefit of an open-structure knowledge bank, available to all industrial learners, is apparent.
The issue of industry-wide knowledge management is further troubled by the fragmentation of the industry, in which ninety percent of the firms are considered small- to medium-size. This makes the hope for intra-firm training and education unlikely. The trend of movement among newcomers into the industry further exacerbates the problem, as they possess quite little loyalty to the employing firm, and the employing firm’’s investment on them would seem irrational. Therefore, the chicken-and-egg problem is prevailing. Newcomers acquire very little help from the experienced in career development, and the employing firms suffer talent shortage because of constant in-waves and out-waves of new hires.
This work aims to aid in mitigating the aforementioned problem, by offering an internet-based encyclopedia of construction methods. The proposed system not only allows practitioners to contribute segmented pieces of knowledge, but also welcomes free exchange of ideas and conversations on the net. The premise of this work hinges upon the success of the renowned Wikipedia, of which altruistic writers have by anonymous collaboration created an encyclopedia, vying with all other similar, yet commercially based ones.
This work bases its structure on requirements gained from expert interviews and tests its usefulness also with field practitioners, who represent future users of the system. It is believed that the proposed system, with its current content, can be used as a platform of intra-firm training purpose. While on the internet, the proposed system will further attracts input from other beneficiaries. Although without definite success, this work can be seen as one of the many trials toward the same goal, namely creating a learning community within the construction industry. | en_US |