Int. J. Networking and Virtual Organisations, Vol. 7, Nos.

2/3, 2010 207

Knowledge management in construction supply

chain integration

Malik M.A. Khalfan*

School of Property, Construction and Project Management
RMIT University, GPO Box 2476V
Melbourne, VIC 3001, Australia
E-mail: malikmansoorali@hotmail.com
*Corresponding author

Mukesh Kashyap
School of Architecture, Design and
the Built Environment
Nottingham Trent University
Burton Street, Nottingham
Nottinghamshire, NG1 4BU, UK
E-mail: mukesh.kashyap@ntu.ac.uk

Xianguang Li
Institute of Construction Management and Real Estate
Department of Construction Management and Real Estate
Southeast University
Nanjing 210096, China
E-mail: xianguangli@yahoo.com

Carl Abbott
School of Built Environment
Salford Centre for Research and Innovation
BuHu Research Institute
University of Salford
4th Floor, Maxwell Building
Salford, Greater Manchester, M5 4WT, UK
E-mail: C.Abbott@salford.ac.uk

Abstract: Knowledge Management (KM) is becoming increasingly important

for organisations across a wide spectrum of industry sectors, especially for
the naturally fragmented construction industry. There has been a growing
realisation that it is very important for each project participant to effectively
capture, share and utilise strategic knowledge and project knowledge, as
well as process knowledge within the construction supply chain for better
performance. This paper highlights the benefits of integrated construction
supply chain management through effective KM. The paper reviews the general
literature in construction supply chains and KM and presents some initiatives in

Copyright © 2010 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

208 M.M.A. Khalfan, M. Kashyap, X. Li and C. Abbott

the abovementioned area, followed by a full theory analysis and case study.
The case study was conducted with a public sector client organisation in the
UK. It explored their strategies for an integrated construction supply chain
through KM, knowledge capture and knowledge sharing. It also studied the
reuse by their employees as well as by the other organisations they worked with
to deliver construction projects in north-west England. The paper concludes
that KM would effectively improve the integration of construction supply
chains and thus improve overall production performance.

Keywords: supply chain integration; knowledge management; public sector

clients; community of practice; CoP.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Khalfan, M.M.A.,

Kashyap, M., Li, X. and Abbott, C. (2010) ‘Knowledge management in
construction supply chain integration’, Int. J. Networking and Virtual
Organisations, Vol. 7, Nos. 2/3, pp.207–221.

Biographical notes: Dr. Malik M.A. Khalfan joined Loughborough University,

UK, after the completion of his PhD in 2001 and was involved in an
EPSRC-funded project as a Research Associate. He is currently working at the
Salford Centre for Research and Innovation (SCRI) of the University of Salford
as a Senior Research Fellow. His research interests include the readiness
assessment of concurrent engineering in construction, sustainable construction,
knowledge management in construction, supply chain management and
procurement within the construction industry. He has more than 75 publications
on the abovementioned research areas. He was the winner of CIOB Innovation
Award 2000 for the Best Research Paper.

Dr. Mukesh Kashyap is a Senior Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, UK.

He has over 15 years of construction experience in building and civil
engineering projects in India, Nigeria and the UK. He holds a degree in Civil
Engineering, a Postgraduate degree in Construction Project Management and a
Doctorate from Loughborough University. He is a member of the Association
for Project Management, an associate member of the Chartered Management
Institute and member of the CIOB. He is presently the Chair of the CIOB East
Midlands branch and sits on the Members’ Forum. His current research
interests include construction health and safety, innovation in construction,
supply chain and knowledge management.

Xianguang Li is a PhD candidate at Southeast University (SEU), China,

majoring in Construction Management. He is currently an academic visitor
at SCRI at the University of Salford, UK. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree
in Civil Engineering from Hennan Polytechnic University in 2003 and
Master of Science from Guizhou University in 2006. He has published 11
papers in national/international journals and conferences. He received full
funding to undertake his PhD in the UK for his outstanding research work. His
research interest mainly focuses on construction supply chain management
and competitiveness.

Carl Abbott is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Salford, UK, and
the Manager of the EPSRC-funded Salford Centre for Research and Innovation
in the Built Environment (SCRI). He initially qualified as an Electronics
Design Engineer with British Aerospace and was a Lecturer in Electronics. He
then joined the University of Salford in 1999 to research IT in construction and
worked closely with regional industry to establish the Centre for Construction
Innovation, where he was the General Manager. His current research interests
include innovation, offsite manufacture, benchmarking and ICT.
 Knowledge management in construction supply chain integration 209

1 Introduction

For the last few years, researchers and practitioners have adopted different concepts and
theories from other industries to bring improvements within the construction industry.
Knowledge Management (KM) is one of those concepts recognised as a core business
concern and intellectual assets playing a vital role in gaining competitive advantage
(Xianguang et al., 2007b). In the construction industry, it is important to manage the
project, process and product related knowledge (Robinson et al., 2005). Once captured,
such knowledge becomes part of the organisation’s knowledge and can be shared,
disseminated, and even used to create new knowledge. Supply chain management is
another concept adopted and being translated to suit the construction industry. The recent
emphasis is on the integration of numerous participants in the supply chain. To deal with
the fragmented nature of the industry Khalfan et al. (2005) have concluded that the more
knowledge about businesses of the participants in a supply chain, the more integrated that
supply chain is. Supply chain integration through effective KM will be discussed in detail
in the light of industrial experiences here. This paper develops a general literature review
to discuss and explore the concept of KM with supply chain management within the
construction industry and presents some initiatives in the above mentioned areas. The
paper utilised the findings of case studies undertaken by the Construction Supply Chain
Management research team at the Salford Centre for Research and Innovation (SCRI)
Research Centre to support the proposition that the supply chains tend to fall apart and do
not work effectively if the KM across the chain is not properly implemented, and vice
versa. The paper also briefly discusses a proposed framework to enable the integration of
construction supply chain as well as supply chain management research focus within the
overall initiative.

2 Supply chain management and integration in construction Industry

2.1 Construction supply chain management
Construction supply-chain management offers new approaches to reduce the cost and
increase the reliability and speed of facility construction. Dainty et al. (2001) described
supply chain management as the management of a network of organisations which are
involved in carrying out the business process. In the construction industry, often these
networks can be of extremely complex nature because of the large number of separate
organisations involved on a large project (Briscoe et al., 2001). Figure 1, taken from
Briscoe et al. (2001) displays a typical construction supply network (only the main
elements), with the main contractor at the centre of the hub.
There are two primary schools of thoughts within supply chain management theory
within the construction industry. The first is associated with logistics theory to reduce
waste through efficient management of flow of supply of materials on a construction site.
This view concentrates on the logistics of construction process, and views supplier
interaction as clusters of subcontractors concentrated around the main contractor.
Bertelsen (1997) also looked at construction supply chain from a logistics point of view.
He concluded that a substantial increase in productivity can be obtained by delivering and
handling building materials efficiently based on conditions dictated by a construction site.
These could be ‘Just-in-Time’ (JIT), and ‘packed for the work process’. The additional
210 M.M.A. Khalfan, M. Kashyap, X. Li and C. Abbott

cost incurred using these approaches can easily be covered by the savings gained on
construction site. The second school is associated with lean thinking and seeks to create
value across the entire chain of supply (London et al., 1998). The supply chain
management on the other hand focuses on understanding and improving the coordination
of multiple firms that compose a supply chain (O’Brien et al., 2002). Figure 2 describes a
conceptual view of a construction supply chain. However, this figure does not give an
indication of the complexity of supply chain production operations.

Figure 1 A typical construction supply chain

Demand for construction.

Client’s requirement for a
new building.

Architects & Main contractor

Engineers design appointed to
building procure building

Sub-
Conversion Sub- Sub- Sub-
contractors
of building contractors contractors to contractors
Raw to convert Commiss Occupancy
materials to convert convert to convert
material building -ioning of of building
into building building building
product into building by client
building product into product into product into
internal
products substructure superstructure services
finishings

Source: Briscoe et al. (2001)

2.2 Construction supply chain integration

The supply chain in construction can be considered as a process of a series of activities
transforming raw materials into finished products. Unlike other industrial sectors, the
construction industry consists of three distinct but interdependent supply chains, namely:
professional services; building and assembly; and materials supply (Cox and Thompson,
1998). With the traditionally adversarial contractual nature of relationships in
construction projects, and fragmented production environment, the construction industry
faces strong barriers to supply chain integration (Li et al., 2007b). This predicament
always results in ineffective, inefficient, and inadequate mechanisms to deliver good
services and profitability. Briscoe and Dainty (2005) pointed out that integration
initiated by project stakeholders may appear in different forms depending on the level
of integration, specific construction sub-sector and type of project. Higher levels of
integration within the supply chain have been coined to lead to higher levels of
effectiveness and efficiency. Some recent evidence suggests that there are opportunities
for improving integration practices although it usually is an elusive goal. Murray et al.
(1999) maintained that long-term strategic partnerships hold the key to integration and
sought to show how such relationships could overcome the temporary nature of one-off
projects and provide a measure of continuity in the supply chain. However, Cox and
Ireland (2002) argue that effective construction supply chain management requires
approach developed on circumstances of the firm rather than just collaboration and
 Knowledge management in construction supply chain integration 211

integration. Childerhouse et al. (2003) have shown how the UK house building sector,
despite responding late to the compelling need for change and starting its business
process reengineer from a relatively poor baseline has remarkably developed supply
chains to embrace the principles of integration. Similarly, Humphreys et al. (2003)
showed a new approach by a main contractor by establishing qualified partnering with
subcontractors that has yielded improvement in terms of integration. There is also
growing realisation that KM drives and enables the construction supply chain integration.

Figure 2 Conceptual view of the construction project supply chain (see online version
for colours)

Source: O’Brien et al. (2002)

2.3 Knowledge management for construction supply chain integration

KM is defined as any process or practice of creating, acquiring, capturing, sharing
and using knowledge, to enhance learning and performance in an organisation
(Scarborough et al., 1999).
Defining knowledge precisely can be problematic since the researchers still debate
the single unified definition of the concept (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Stewart, 1997;
Boisot, 1998). However, it is widely agreed that knowledge is a valuable yet frequently
intangible asset (Tiwana, 2000), and that there are several dimensions of knowledge,
i.e., individual and group knowledge, internal and external knowledge, tacit (know-how
that is stored in people’s head) and explicit (documented and publicly available)
knowledge (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Duffy, 2000; Al-Ghassani et al., 2002).
Different views of knowledge lead to different perceptions of KM. Overall, KM is largely
regarded as a process involving various activities. Generally, it includes the four basic
processes of creating, storing/retrieving, transferring, and applying knowledge. These
major processes can be subdivided, for example, into creating internal knowledge,
acquiring external knowledge, storing knowledge in documents versus storing in routines
(Teece, 1998) as well as updating the knowledge and sharing knowledge internally and
externally (Alavi and Leidner, 2001).
KM generally deals with the systematic and organised attempt to use knowledge
within an organisation to transform its ability to store and use it to improve performance
(KPMG, 1998). The importance of KM for the construction industry has widely been
acknowledged by various researchers (Egbu, 2002; Carrillo et al., 2003; Carrillo, 2004).
212 M.M.A. Khalfan, M. Kashyap, X. Li and C. Abbott

Other important research works conducted to improve the understanding of KM

mechanisms within the construction industry include; the provision of a KM framework
(Kamara et al., 2002), the impact of KM on construction innovation (Egbu
et al., 2001), the effect on business processes and performance (Preece et al., 2000), the
role of IT to improve KM (Carrillo et al., 2000; Patel et al., 2000), and mechanism to
improve knowledge transfers between construction organisations (Fernie et al., 2001).
Integrated KM mechanisms can help to improve the organisational performance and
business processes of the supply chain partners. According to Mertins et al. (2001), for
the construction supply chain, KM can result in providing an understanding of markets
and customers; developing visions and strategies; developing products and services;
improvements in marketing and sales as well as the production and distribution of
products and/or services. For a construction supply chain this may include process and
product improvements by sharing knowledge among the supply chain partners, reduced
costs as a result of centralised communication among collaborating partners, or increased
profits by using centralised knowledge as a source of competitive advantage to win new
or repeat businesses.
An understanding of the concept of knowledge and knowledge taxonomies is
important because theoretical developments in the KM area are influenced by the
distinction among the different types of knowledge (Alavi and Leidner, 2001). The
knowledge taxonomies discussed here can inform the design of KM systems to improve
the construction supply chain by calling attention to the need for support of different
types of knowledge and the flows among these different chains. KM may provide an
opportunity for extending the scope of IT-based knowledge provision. Different
knowledge types, their characteristics and examples supporting construction supply chain
integration are summarised in Table 1.

Table 1 Knowledge types and examples supporting construction supply chain integration

Knowledge
types Characteristic Examples
Tacit Knowledge is rooted in actions, Individual’s belief on cause-effect relations within
experience, and involvement in construction supply chain integration
specific construction project
Explicit Articulated, generalised Knowledge of major partners within
knowledge construction industry
Individual Created by and inherent in Insights gained from completed project
the individual
Social Created by and inherent in Norms for supply chain communication
collective actions of a group
Declarative Know-about Which partner is responsible for this task
Procedural Know-how How to cooperate with a partner (e.g., subcontractor)
Causal Know-why Understanding why partner respond in a specific way
Conditional Know-when Understanding when to ask supplier to transport
construction materials to site
Relational Know-with Understanding how the partners interact with
each other
Pragmatic Useful knowledge for Construction best practices, construction
an organisation procurement route, project experiences, engineering
drawings, and so on
Source: Adapted from Alavi and Leidner (2001)
 Knowledge management in construction supply chain integration 213

It is now becoming necessary to know more about people, project and processes because
the concept of the construction project team is moving from temporary to virtually
permanent team (Vrijhoef and Voordijk, 2004). Sharing knowledge among project
participants about the project and your partner’s businesses, will not only bring new
culture within the industry but will also bring benefits which will be enjoyed by
everybody within an integrated supply chain (Khalfan et al., 2005). They concluded that
effective knowledge sharing and improved mechanisms for KM across the construction
supply chain, offer the supply chain participants, a mechanism to improve their
performance through integrating construction supply chain, and added advantage to be
ahead of their competitors. The trend of people coming together, working for a number of
years and then dispersing is now out of fashion, since the competition in the construction
market is moving from firm level competition to supply chain level competition (Li et al.,
2007a). The changing role of the different participants within a construction supply chain
has resulted in the greater importance of gathering, storing and making strategic use of
project, supplier and market knowledge. DTI Report (2003) highlighted that the selection
of preferred suppliers in a supply chain is vital in order to get detailed information about
them and their businesses, for example, knowledge about:
• all potential first tier suppliers operating in the market and their capabilities
• suppliers that are being currently used
• whether any identified preferred suppliers are subsidiaries of
competing organisations
• if the suppliers have any preferred arrangements with any competitors
• the extent to which they match the requirements of the client’s organisation in
terms of size, capacity, geographic coverage, relevant experience, management
organisation, cultural fit, quality, health and safety and environmental systems,
performance levels, etc.
• the structure of the marketplace and the extent of competition
• the nature of the supply chain, how many parties there are and where the power lies
• which second and third tier companies are used by first tier suppliers and whether
it would be feasible and sensible for production/commercial reasons to open up
relationships directly with these lower tiers
• the quality of the products/services – their detailed specifications for production and
assembly and the upkeep of these specifications
• future anticipated changes in the supply chain members and the market-place
• competitive price levels; with respect to this point, it could be necessary to
benchmark these levels with companies outside of the construction sector or even
with another construction company that is not a direct competitor
• the client organisation’s forward order book, i.e., clients sharing the total spend
profile with their supply chain partners.
Once these specialised knowledge have been gathered by all the participants involved
within a supply chain on a specific project, which can be achieved through the use of
questionnaires, holding meetings with suppliers and market research, it must be kept up
to date and made constantly available to all supply chain participants and project
personnel involved in selecting companies with whom they wish to work. Thus the core
of any KM initiative is to provide an environment conducive to create, develop and
214 M.M.A. Khalfan, M. Kashyap, X. Li and C. Abbott

nurture relationships between people, both by facilitating an environment that encourages

knowledge creation and sharing it by providing adequate mechanism to capture, store and
share the knowledge (Dawson, 2000). The sharing of such knowledge around the
business is essential for working effectively with other supply chain participants in a
more integrated manner. If supply chain integration is to achieve, it is also essential to
form much closer relationships and build better knowledge of suppliers’ capabilities.
Organisations increasingly rely on the networking of resources and competencies (Scarso
and Bolisani, 2008). Quintas (2005) highlighted that knowledge is often created within
Communities of Practices (CoPs) who share experiences and understanding that are
transferable to those outside the community. Building networks and partnerships can act
as source of generating information flow and knowledge and can help in promoting a
strong degree of organisation integration, social capital, shared cultural values and a
common vision.

2.4 Industry practices

As construction clients became more aware of better services, KM has increasingly
become more important for construction organisations to integrate themselves into
effective construction supply chains to stay competitive. Sheehan et al. (2005) stressed on
better methods of managing organisational knowledge as the fundamentals for future
survival and success. This section illustrates one of the industry practices observed during
a case in which KM was implemented by a particular public sector client, through CoPs.
CoPs are communities comprising of a group of individuals or teams that have a long
history of collaborating together to develop into a cohesive community through shared
understanding (Lindkvist, 2005). Wenger (1999) classified CoPs as the informal network
of individuals who identify common problems, explore common solutions, share good
practices and ideas around a specific area of knowledge. CoPs bring together a
collaborative group of people willing and dedicated to sharing and developing
knowledge. Table 2 below shows typical examples of how CoPs in the construction
industry may improve construction supply chain through effective KM activities.

Table 2 Community of practice KM activities

KM activities Example
Problem solving ‘Can we work on this design and brainstorm some ideas; I’m stuck.’
Requests for information ‘Do you have information about the new regulations?’
Seeking experience ‘Has anyone worked on a similar project with similar situations’
Reusing assets ‘I have a project proposal, which I wrote for a client last year. I can
send it to you and you can easily tweak it for your new client.’
Coordination and synergy ‘Can we work together to bid for this contract?’
Discussing developments ‘What do you think of the new project financing system?’ Does it
really help?
Project documentation ‘We have faced this problem five times now. Let us write it down
once and for all.’
Visits ‘Can we come and see what you are doing at your site? We have
similar problems and/or requirements on our new project.’
Mapping knowledge and ‘Who knows what?’ ‘What are we missing?’ ‘Which other
identifying gaps organisations should we contact?’
Source: Adapted from Wenger (2007)
 Knowledge management in construction supply chain integration 215

3 Research methodology

The main aim of the research was to establish how KM within the construction industry
can be applied to integrate the supply chain to ensure better quality whilst still supporting
the initiatives of government and clients, aimed at increasing the competitiveness of the
construction sector. The project conducted extensive field research and continuously
reviewed academic, industrial and web-based literature to maintain an awareness of
current developments. The project investigated changes in the quality of services in
response to clients’ innovative procurement and KM initiatives. For this purpose a case
study approach supplemented with semi-structured interviews was adopted. The
advantage of the case study is that it can ‘close in’ on real-life situations and test views
directly in relation to phenomena as they unfold in practice (Campbell, 1975). The case
study approach followed the protocol developed by Stake (1995) and Yin (2002). The
research used multiple methods to collect qualitative and quantitative data. Ragin (1992)
went on to explain that criticising single-case studies for being inferior to multiple case
studies is misguided, because even single-case studies are multiple in most research
efforts because ideas and evidence may be linked in many different ways. The case study
presented here is part of a research project, called, Supply Chain Integration within
Construction, funded by EPSRC through IMRC funding Basic quantitative data and
company documentation were used to provide research context while qualitative data,
collected in the form of a number of unstructured interviews, sought to understand how
KM was implemented to achieve integration by different supply chain partners. The case
study attempted to uncover the perceptions of firms within the construction industry with
regard to the existing KM they currently undertake. In order to validate the findings, the
research involved multiple visits to client organisation and at least three interviews with
managing directors. The main author conducted 15 interviews with senior management
within the client organisation and their supply chain partners for this case study.

4 Case study

The case study was done with a public sector client, a local council, having a portfolio
to deliver new and/or refurbished public facilities to the residents in North West of
England. The projects included refurbishment of social housing stock, building primary
and secondary schools through its in-house development team which acted as client
by developing the specifications and allocating budget for different facilities. For this
client-led innovative procurement of developing educational infrastructures, the council
developed a framework agreement to construct primary schools (in first phase) with costs
ranging £500,000 to £5 m. The council appointed three constructor partners initially for
three years followed by an extension of two years in 2004. The core values of the
framework agreement, for example, trust; honesty; openness; commitment; cooperation;
and respect, based on the partnering concept, formed a virtual CoP between client and all
other participants.
Case study data was collected through semi-structured interviews with managing
directors and other staff members of each organisation involved in the supply chain.
Interviews lasted for about an hour. Ever since the appointment, some projects have
already been delivered, some recently started, and some are in the early stages of design.
216 M.M.A. Khalfan, M. Kashyap, X. Li and C. Abbott

The framework had a special focus on KM to improve the construction supply chain. The
council’s vision that the framework agreement will deliver good quality school buildings
is already being realised which has lead to, greater inclusion within the community; better
safety and environmental performance; better educational results; and reduced costs by
addressing whole life cycle costing at the inception of the projects.
Some of the major benefits that will be achieved by adopting the KM across the
supply chain during construction of primary schools were identified as:
• overall improved cooperation between chain partners
• improved design as well as information management
• more real time co-planning and implementation
• improved delivery with greater quality
• greater certainty about cost and better whole life cycle costing
• building of trust and relationships
• bringing all ‘project knowledge’ together at the inception of a project.
Despite the absence of formal collaboration agreements between the three main
contractors and their supply chain partners, team members got involved in these
groups of CoP to capture and share their expertise and knowledge in their respective
areas to add value to the project. As mentioned earlier, the case study about KM based
CoP, described above, is a by-product of a bigger case study of supply chain management
in our research centre.

5 Discussions and analysis

As part of the KM based framework agreement with the client, all three main contractors
had to integrate their first tier supply chain, including the design team and M&E
contractors. They all engaged with the client to develop the plans for the primary school
development, sharing their knowledge and expertise, new knowledge for the specific
project was also created. In addition, the introduction of a post-construction snag period
(normally 12 months) would reduce the complaints from the end users (heads and
building in-charge of the schools), resulting in much quicker responses and solutions to
any problems occurring in the school building. This was due to knowledge retained by
introducing snag period while the same contractor is still working with the client on other
projects. This client-driven initiative is bringing all the parties involved into a community
resulting in sharing of knowledge and experiences. Different mechanisms are used for
KM including project meetings and special interest groups coordinated by the client in
addition to the project intranet and formal meeting for each project. This level of
coordination is unprecedented within the construction industry and resulted in clear
construction supply chain integration as well as client benefits from:
• representatives of all three contractors sitting down together and agreeing on choice
of standardised material, e.g., windows, doors, which resulted demand integration
across the chain with scale economy
 Knowledge management in construction supply chain integration 217

• architects reporting to different contracting organisations working together to learn

from each others’ designs, hence high-quality design with better constructability
was achieved
• learning from one project within the framework is documented and carried forward
to new projects by capturing the experiences of the people involved; and the
knowledge was transferred to other projects
• using special interest groups to find suppliers of material. This avoids duplication of
effort by the three main contractors. It leaded to supply integration across the chain
with big procumbent discount
• use of project intranet and e-mail facilities in addition to above, in order to support
the knowledge capture, sharing, and reuse.
Knowledge captured and shared is both tacit and explicit. Explicit are the obvious ones in
which the contact names and/or details of suppliers are provided by main contractors.
Tacit would be when they start sharing their experience and knowledge of a process of
constructing something which may have given them a competitive advantage within a
traditional form of contacts and relationships. For example, the material specialist group
is investigating the quality of different products and also working towards aggregating
the demand. At the same time, they aim to reduce the number of suppliers for each
product and ultimately to have a single preferred supplier (with an aim to have a shorter
and integrated supply chain). At the same time, they are looking into standardised
material, e.g., standard door and windows and also incorporating these standardisations
within the design and specifications. Contractor personnel in the material specialist group
have been able to draw on their previous experience and introduced known suppliers to
the client. These standardisations will also be used in subsequent framework projects
with nominated suppliers. The description presented above concerns KM among different
supply chain participants who are working on different projects under different
contractors and have no contractual relationship with each other. Such KM especially
knowledge sharing was non-existent within the public sector framework agreements and
other construction contracts where different main contractors (and their supply chain
participants), working for the same local authority, would previously have been reluctant
to share knowledge in case of putting their competitive advantage at risk.
Another important question is: Is quality improving by application of KM across the
supply chain? In the case study concerned, the local authority has developed Key
Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure the performance of the contractors and their
supply chains. The data gathered through KPIs shows the improvements in a range of
measures, including satisfaction of the client through KM based construction supply
chain (Khalfan and McDermott, 2007). Sharing knowledge about suppliers and
subcontractors, as well as methods of installation and construction has resulted in
improved quality, not only in terms of getting better products from suppliers, but also in
terms of labour productivity, better constructed facility and value for money for the
client. The above mentioned strategy not only helps client and involved parties to capture
and share knowledge, but is also extremely beneficial for the whole supply chain
especially if involved in repeat type of work, i.e., constructing primary schools. The
integrated supply chains can use the lessons learnt from one project to another captured
though CoPs resulting into savings in terms of time and cost, reduction in waste, more
effective planning and scheduling on site and more efficient resource management.
218 M.M.A. Khalfan, M. Kashyap, X. Li and C. Abbott

6 Summary and conclusion

This paper has explored the role and method of KM to achieve an integrated and effective
supply chain through literature review, theory analysis and a case study. The paper
started with defining the concept of supply chain management within the construction
industry as well as KM across construction supply chain. The CoP concept with focus on
KM was only observed in one of the four case studies conducted; therefore, the other
three case studies and their findings were out of the scope of this paper. The later part of
the paper presented a case study within which CoP have been identified as an effective
way of managing organisational knowledge and integrate construction supply chain.
The case study described a client-driven initiative in the construction industry where
three subcontractors and their supply chains have become a community of practice,
through KM to facilitate supply chain integration and cooperation, hence delivering better
value to the client. The three main contractors involved themselves voluntarily in the
whole process of capturing and sharing both tacit and explicit knowledge with their
competitors in the region. The incentive of participation in KM is identified by the
continuous work and opportunities for future work with the same client for at least five
years. The process has been a valuable learning experience and lessons learnt have
resulted in achieving improvement in Key Performance Indicators and better client
satisfaction. The adoption of KM has improved the integration of the specific
construction supply chain and facilitated the development of a community of practice
focused on helping the client to fulfil their aims related to regeneration and sustainable
communities (Khalfan and McDermott, 2006; 2007). The main contribution of the paper
is to identify and highlight the applicability of KM to achieve construction supply chain
integration to illustrate how this can be implemented using toolkits such as CoP’s to
overcome organisational barriers and deliver benefits to clients.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the support provided by the other members of the
SCRI Research Centre (an EPSRC funded research centre).

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