CHAPTER ONE
1.0       Background of the Study
According to Botha, D.F (2004) knowledge management is a process of systematic management of vital knowledge and its associated process of creating, gathering, organizing diffusion, use and exploitation. It requires turning personal knowledge into corporate knowledge that can be widely shared throughout the organisation. Projects are typically delivered by a temporary organisation comprising designers, consultants, contractors, supplier and others. The need for knowledge management (KM) is particularly relevant to the construction industry which now faces many challenges. These include economic swings, new markets emerging in the global economy, increasing competition, the impact of technology, new and increasing demands from clients, customers and society, and the requirement to maintain a highly skilled workforce at all levels (Egbu and Robinson 2005). Contracting firms are becoming increasingly involved in challenging and complex, knowledge-intensive procurement routes such as management contracting, design and build, joint ventures, public private partnerships as well as the traditional procurement route. According to Quintas (2005) there are two potentially conflicting objectives of Knowledge Management, to build knowledge bases cumulatively and to learn from past experience; and to ensure learning beyond core areas, generating the capability to assimilate new knowledge in order to be able to respond to change. In a study of American contractors, Fisher et al. (1998) identified a number of reasons for implementing Knowledge Management practices as: high staff turnover leading to loss of experience; and large size of organisations make sharing knowledge difficult. Construction organisations have garnered much attention in terms of the potential benefits of knowledge management, with little evidence of how to actually manage knowledge in practice.
A lack of understanding of both knowledge and its subsequent management within the industry indicates the need for further empirical research in the field (Robinson et al. 2005). The types of organisation which shall be given consideration in this research are main contractors.
Traditionally, these organisations were labour-intensive employing a full workforce of labourers and tradesmen to execute the construction phase of a project on a building site. Many of these companies have now moved from being a ‘building company’ towards directly employing a core professional and management team to lead teams of outsourced contractors. The nature of the industry requires them to establish temporary organisational structures at dispersed geographical locations, frequently at a distance from central management (Raiden and Dainty 2006). Against the backdrop of an industry which is highly competitive and exhibits low levels of research, the purpose of this, is to present ongoing research into knowledge management within the leading Nigerian construction industries. Commencing with a background to the Nigerian construction industry this research shall also present a review of literature related to Knowledge Management in construction, progress in the research to-date, the proposed research methodology and future research activities.
1.2       Statement of the problem
The construction industry is recognized as being poor at learning on a consistent basis and improving performance and is notoriously slow in adapting to progressive change. Two categories requiring knowledge management in the construction industry have been identified; within projects across temporary, multi-discipline project organizations; and within individual firms. It is accepted that there may be much greater potential for knowledge management within individual companies. Despite the recognized need to adopt knowledge management, it is considered to in its infancy in the construction industry and is soon as a recent and evolving practice for construction organizations.
The lack of a working definition of knowledge within construction organization and awareness of the importance of potential advantages of knowledge management reflects a casual approach, and indicates the need for further exploration of knowledge and knowledge management related issues.