Implementing a Web-based knowledge base for a construction company: Industry-academia collaboration

Abstract

Knowledge Bases (KB) that capture and leverage the knowledge and experiences of employees are popular in many industries. However, in the construction industry, knowledge base implementation has been limited to some applications at the design stage or to project databases during the construction stage. This paper describes a project for implementing a web based knowledge base to help a company transfer construction knowledge from experienced professionals in the field to newly hired professionals. A team of students and faculty in the Honors and Scholars program at University of Cincinnati and construction professionals at the Messer Construction Company developed an application to tap the experience of professionals for internal use of the company. This paper describes the process of conceptualizing, designing, developing, testing and implementing the web based Knowledge base.