The principal asset of any design firm is the accumulated knowledge and experience of its staff. But how widely and efficiently is that knowledge shared within the organization? Unfortunately, most design firms have no systematic way of compiling, storing, and reusing their knowledge assets. How much time are employees spending searching for information that is within the firm’s knowledge base but not available when needed—in other words, reinventing the wheel? Does your firm have a culture of knowledge sharing or knowledge hoarding? Are staff aware of the experts within the organization or do they rely on informal word-of-mouth networks? When key employees leave the firm, how much of the firm’s knowledge investment leaves with them?

Knowledge management (KM) seeks to capture what the firm knows and make that knowledge accessible throughout the organization. The firm’s ability to harness its own knowledge assets is seen by clients as a key indicator of it’s organizational savvy and by design firm marketers as a way to separate from the competition.

A systematic plan for knowledge management is essential in both large firms and small, single office and multi-office, although the tools in use may range from simple and cheap to very sophisticated. But for design firms of any size, one of the best tools for KM is an intranet, or internal, private Web site.

Case Study: ADD Inc.

Jill Rothenberg is Chief Technology Officer with ADD Inc., a 150 person multidisciplinary design firm with offices in Cambridge, MA, San Francisco, and Miami. The firm recently launched version 3.0 of its’ intranet, an evolution that began with version 1 in 1996. It is a unified, Web-based portal to many containers of internal firm information.

ADD Inc. staff enter the site on a “today page” that links to the shared Microsoft Outlook calendar. This page has office events, news, announcements and serves to reduce the clutter of interoffice email. From there, employees can navigate to information about firm standards for project management, file-naming conventions, the HR manual, libraries of photos and CAD details, and templates for meeting notes, proposal letters, and contracts. From within the intranet, staff can schedule resources – conference rooms, A/V, catering, and then use the calendar function to invite colleagues to meetings. The shared calendar knows who is on vacation or away from the office on business.

The intranet understands that departments and individuals in the firm “own” their own information and it is designed to support this independence by giving employees the tools they need to manage and share their data.

The intranet brought unexpected social benefits as well. “Offices are social places,” says Rothenberg, and employees are free to illustrate their personal pages with family photos and news items they wish to share with co-workers. During the late 1990s the firm was growing so rapidly that people didn’t know where to turn for help with projects. “When problems arose, people didn’t know whom to consult, so the intranet has a list of ‘go-to’ experts within the firm.” Rothenberg feels the firm’s sophistication about technology appeals to clients and serves to differentiate ADD Inc. from the competition. “It’s made us look very good in interviews,” she said.

	ADD Inc.'s intranet

Case Study: Ove Arup and Partners

Arup is a far-flung engineering consultancy with five thousand employees in sixty offices and forty countries. Their intranet began as an attempt to “create a road map to the knowledge within the firm,” according to Phillip Crompton of Arup’s Los Angeles office. The firm was so large that it was difficult to keep track of all the expertise it possessed. Originally Arup had an “overguide,” a directory to all the engineers and their experience, and a “skills network.” “Whatever engineering problem you were trying to solve, someone in the firm had probably solved it already. The real problem was finding that person,” explained Crompton. “We were reinventing the wheel and sometimes even working at cross purposes.” Knowledge of the firm’s resources was based largely on word of mouth. What Arup needed was a central repository of the firm’s expertise, and that need led to the development of an intranet.

	Pages from Arup's extensive intranet for knowledge management

At first, each office developed its own intranet, and the central office did not try to exert much control. This ad hoc approach allowed the firm to experiment widely. After evaluation, firm managers found a common ground where engineering expertise could be indexed by skill sets and by branch office. Now Arup is developing a second-generation intranet that will be more structured, with a recognizable firm-wide interface. The Arup intranet includes specifications in Word and PDF formats, details as CAD files, and a database that tracks how details have been implemented in firm projects. Engineers can annotate details and specs with notes about how well they worked in one instance or how they failed in another, maintaining a record of their use in real projects. Crompton calls this “invaluable information.” The effort that went into development of a detail is preserved, along with the firm’s experience with it. The feedback loop between design and implementation is captured, providing a sterling example of the way that IT can be brought to the service of design. And by capturing its’ own knowledge, the firm distinguishes itself in the marketplace.

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