Can knowledge-event approach work in construction SMEs?

Knowledge management (KM) is still new to the construction industry and has not been exploited fully, especially in SMEs. There are various reasons for this, among which is the complexity of and the amount of resources needed for current approaches to KM. This paper reports on the success of a new approach to KM designed for SMEs called Knowledge-Event Management (KEM) working with the oral and social world of construction. KEM is a simple and low cost yet robust approach for KM which uses audio diaries to capture knowledge events and a debriefing technique to extract the learning and knowledge from the events. The approach was tested with 12 construction SMEs across the country and the outcome was successful in terms of effectiveness and practicality. Following these trials, focus group meetings with the partnering companies and dissemination workshops with professional organisations were held to promote and evaluate the approach. The evaluation used a questionnaire survey to seek the industry's opinions on this approach. The survey results from 74 respondents are provided and these show that practitioners welcome this approach which they found useful and worth fitting into their routine work. The survey also assessed the ways of disseminating learning generated from KM practice, and identified several enablers and barriers to KM in construction SMEs.