**7. Case study**

The following case study involves a contractor with seven years of specific experience in Taiwan high-tech construction projects. The contractor hoped to take full advantage of knowledge management (KM) to obtain the valued experience from participating engineers and effectively manage it for exchange and reuse in other comparable projects. The contractor, therefore, announced that all engineers would be encouraged to use the CWTKM system to apply KM to effectively manage acquired knowledge from participating engineers. The CWTKM system was utilized in the Taiwan construction building project to verify the proposed methodology and demonstrate the effectiveness of sharing previous knowledge in the construction phase. The case study was undertaken in a 11-month construction project with a schedule including approximately 1,450 activities. Moreover, all engineers were encouraged to explore and edit their own experience in the CWTKM system. In the knowledge acquisition phase, senior engineers and knowledge workers undertook most work knowledge acquisition, since tacit knowledge must be acquired directly from the minds of engineers. Further, the tacit knowledge may be transferred into explicit knowledge by senior engineers and knowledge workers themselves. Most tacit knowledge extracted for reuse and storage may be available from the memories of experts and engineers. In a broader view, knowledge extraction may also include capturing knowledge from other sources such as from problem-solution descriptions, suggestions, innovation and collaboration.

In the case study, the senior engineer attempted to edit domain knowledge and experience in the "Contract management among subcontractors" learning lesson. The learning lesson experience in contract problem-facing description among subcontractors, detailed situation description and problem-solution explanations. The knowledge workers and senior engineer initially sketched the main knowledge map based on the original project networkbased schedule plan. After the main map was identified, the five experienced senior engineers were invited to edit their experience in the TBM regarding contract problemfacing. Related information/documentation was then collected and converted into a digital format. The attached files included digital documents, video and photo files. After the related attached files were digitized, the senior engineer packaged them as an experience set for submission. The knowledge workers, also, assisted the senior engineers in completing the above digitization work and conferred with them weekly to accelerate the problem solving process. The project activities continued for ten months. All engineers were required to provide their own knowledge regarding the tasks for which they were responsible. Each engineer created a knowledge map and summarized his experience and domain knowledge in the map to enable the reuse of the solution process for future projects. The knowledge map included: the knowledge topic, knowledge descriptions, knowledge diagram, knowledge attribute, knowledge packages and linkage, the solution to the problem, including related documents, photographs and videos of processes, and expert suggestions, including notes, discussions and meeting records. Knowledge was extracted based on every process defined as it related to the map units of a project. Domain knowledge and knowledge were organized according to the attributes of the map units concerned. When the submitted knowledge set was approved, the system illustrated the process automatically, and an assistant in the KM team attributed the knowledge and classified the knowledge by placing it in an appropriate position (map units in the TBM) in the system. Restated, users can locate and directly access related knowledge simply by clicking on these map units located on the multilevel knowledge maps. In the knowledge storage phase, all knowledge was centralized and stored in the central database to avoid duplicating data. All knowledge can be stored in the system by ensuring that data are all electronic and in a standard format for each file type such as a specific document or drawing format. All knowledge maps must be validated to perform well before the knowledge maps are published. All validation is performed in enterprise KM terms by domain experts, knowledge workers and knowledge map makers. Finally, the knowledge set is automatically backed up from the knowledge database to another database. The system automatically sends a message confirming the update to the appropriate users after approving and storing the experience.

A new project is started after completion of the construction project ten months earlier. A senior engineer encounters two different problems in a new project whose information is unavailable in the CWTKM System. After referring suggestions and assistance from senior engineers, the senior engineer solves the problem and shares the new solution with senior engineers. Finally, the senior engineer creates a new map unit and knowledge package, and submits the obtained suggestion and experience to the map unit of the knowledge map, linked with the related knowledge topics. Moreover, the knowledge is later updated when further feedback and another solution to the same problem are added. The updated knowledge set is republished in the map units of the knowledge map after completing the approval process, and a notice is transmitted to the authorized members.
