Knowledge management: everyone benefits by sharing information

Large organizations know a lot of things, but they don't always know what they know. Consider this scenario: You're a specialist in construction technology, and you work in a field office of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). A civil engineer at a state department of transportation calls you, requesting information about SuperpaveT asphalt mixture design. You know FHWA has plenty of information about Superpave. But where is it? How do you find it? Whom do you call?

The situation is complicated by the fact that knowledge about Superpave exists in a number of forms. Some pavement experts at FHWA have been following Superpave developments ever since the technology was introduced. A good-practices paper was written to document one state's experience. Several university researchers have written journal articles about the effects of the environment on Superpave asphalt mixtures. How can you be sure, even if you identify one or two sources of expertise, that you've done more than scratch the surface of the available information?

That's the kind of problem faced by thousands of organizations - thousands of times a day - and it's the reason for the development of a concept known as knowledge management.