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Knowledge Management integration in Occupational Health and Safety

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Article  in  International Journal of Product Development · September 2011

DOI: 10.1504/IJPD.2011.042298

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Int. J. Product Development, Vol. 14, Nos. 1–4, 2011 165

Knowledge Management integration in Occupational

Health and Safety systems in the construction
industry

Mario Fargnoli
Department of Rural Development, COSVIR III
Ministry of Agricultural Food and Forestry Policies,
via xx Settembre, 20 Rome 00187, Italy
Fax: (+39) 064881707
E-mail: m.fargnoli@politicheagricole.gov.it
*Corresponding author

Margherita De Minicis and Giulio Di Gravio

Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering,
University of Rome “La Sapienza”,
via Eudossiana, 18 Rome 00187, Italy
Fax: (+39) 06 4458 5746
E-mail: margherita.deminicis@uniroma1.it
E-mail: giulio.digravio@uniroma1.it

Abstract: Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) is still a critical problem in

the construction industry characterised by many Small and Medium Enterprises
(SMEs). The role of knowledge in improving safety performances has been
deeply investigated, suggesting the integration of Knowledge Management
(KM) issues in the traditional approach to OHS management systems. On these
considerations, a KM tool, specifically designed for SMEs in the construction
field, was developed. Its architecture extends the document and content
management features allowing users an easy aggregation and capitalisation of
information from different sources, facilitating the creation of corporate
memory throughout different companies.

Keywords: OHS management systems; KM; knowledge management;

knowledge capitalisation; safety culture; construction industry.

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

De Minicis, M. and Di Gravio, G. (2011) ‘Knowledge Management integration
in Occupational Health and Safety systems in the construction industry’,
Int. J. Product Development, Vol. 14, Nos. 1–4, pp.165–185.

Biographical notes: Mario Fargnoli is currently employed at the Italian

Ministry of Agriculture as Technical Director and collaborates with the
University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ as Adjunct Researcher. He worked at the
Department of Precision Machinery of the University of Tokyo as JSPS Fellow
Researcher from 2005 to 2007. He earned his PhD in Energetics (Design for
Sustainable Product Development) at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’
in 2005. His research works and interest mainly concern ecodesign, design for
safety, OHS management systems and Safety of Machinery.

Copyright © 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

166 M. Fargnoli et al.

Margherita De Minicis received her MSc in Mechanical Engineering from

University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, Rome in 2007. Currently, she is a PhD
student in Engineering of Industrial Production in the Department of
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Rome
‘La Sapienza’. Her research activities refer mainly to maintenance
management, safety and reliability, risk management and knowledge
management.

Giulio Di Gravioisan is Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Plants

at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of the University
of Rome ‘La Sapienza’. He earned his PhD in Engineering of Industrial
Production in 2006. His current activities refer mainly to QHSE management
systems, information systems and maintenance management.

1 Introduction

Over the last decade, attention paid to Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) issues has
considerably increased in most of the European countries. Such an improvement may be
attributed to many factors as for the new approach to technical harmonisation and
standards, established in late 1980s by European Union (EU) members. At the same time,
awareness of a ‘safety culture’ has grown up in the society, as well as ‘safety
management’ approaches have been promoted especially in large-sized companies.
As a matter of fact, many significant studies on industrial safety, hygiene and
psychosocial factors, together with the introduction of specific management tools and
systems, were proposed to help companies in complying with these specific regulations.
Despite such an evolution, in EU countries, the number of accidents and victims has
not significantly decreased (OSHA (2009) New and emerging risks in Occupational
Safety and Health – Annexes). In spite of a general improvement, the construction
industry remains a critical sector: in EU, 22.4% of the total accidents in 2006 (Eurostat)
was registered in constructions, as well as an increase of fatalities. Furthermore, the same
study showed that for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), the number of accidents is
sensibly larger, with a frequency rate (calculated for 100,000 workers) of about 7,000
accidents in companies up to 250 employees, compared to 4,700 accidents occurred in
companies with more than 250 employees.
As for EU countries, in Italy, the construction industry is particularly critical from an
occupational safety perspective. Italian Workers’ Compensation Authority denotes that in
2006, even in a general decreasing trend, about 320 fatalities occurred, 82.6% of which
happened in small companies (fewer than 15 employees). Regulations recently issued in
Italy have increased fines and punishments to enhance managers responsibility, thus
following suggestions provided by late EU directives. Furthermore, the improvement of
all the aspects related to both workers training and information, as well as to safety
management and organisation systems, have brought to light the necessity of creating an
appropriate management system to maintain and keep aware companies of the evolution
of mandatory safety requisites. This situation appears even more critical if we consider
the very large number of SMEs, where the adoption of effective safety management
systems is particularly difficult due to the dynamicity of the construction process:
 Knowledge Management integration 167

• every project is unique, and activities, workplaces, workforce, equipment and layout
continually change within the same project
• safety requirements have to be continuously updated according to the specific
characteristics of the different projects
• turnover of employees is high, in particular of migrant workers
• resources dedicated to management systems are generally limited.
As it emerged from the analysis carried out in collaboration with the Italian National
Institute for Occupational Prevention and Safety (ISPESL), the number of companies that
operates in construction sector without complying with law requisites is still large.
This paper presents the results of a two-year research (started in 2008 and supported
by the Department of Safety Technologies of ISPESL). Scope of the project was to
improve safety in the construction industry through the integration of Knowledge
Management (KM) issues and OHS management systems. The paper is structured as
follows: the next section deals with safety issue in the SMEs operating in the construction
industry and the role of knowledge and OHS management systems in this specific sector.
A brief literature review of KM systems and their applications are reported in Section 4,
focusing the attention on the concepts of corporate memories and the knowledge
capitalisation cycle. The integration between KM and OHS systems is discussed in
Section 5; thus, the research development and the ANZEN pilot application are explained
in Section 6. Sections 7 and 8 define the two different layers of such an application.
Then, results are discussed in Section 9 followed by conclusions.

2 Background

Considering the above-mentioned aspects, it seems clear that one of the difficulties,
which SMEs encountered in complying with safety requirements, is the lack of a ‘safety
culture’ problem that can be generalised to all the organisation of these dimensions.
Cardera and Ragan (2003) researched the use of employee surveys, carried out over a
10-year period, to measure safety in a chemical company with about 6000 employees and
over 50 plants. The study demonstrates that the role of education and knowledge of the
workforce is a key aspect for accidents prevention both in workers and managers
perspective. OHS training and education resulted in being the most important aspect for
workers also in the construction field, as reported in the survey in Dingsdag et al. (2008),
and the ‘climate and culture’ appears as an important aspect for high safety levels in
construction industry according to Törner and Pousette (2009).
The implementation of an OHS management system can act as a key factor for
workplaces safety improvement, according to the Plan-Do-Check-Act approach of the
BS-OHSAS 18001 standard or to the application of ILO-OSH 2001 ‘ad-hoc’ guidelines.
Even if this first step of evolution could be supportive for SMEs, obstacles
in the implementation of OHS management systems are still numerous, as emerged from
the analysis carried out; most significant hindrances can be found in:
168 M. Fargnoli et al.

• the lack of experience about safety procedures and the use of Personal Protection
Equipments (PPEs)
• the difficulties and costs to keep the company in compliance with up-to-date laws
and regulations
• the difficulties and costs to carry out a regular maintenance of equipment and safety
devices.
The role of KM in supporting the creation of a company safety culture and improving
OHS systems performances has been deeply analysed in literature (Sherehiy
and Karwowski, 2006 and Kamardeen, 2009). The adoption of KM systems has also been
investigated by several authors e.g., Liebowitz and Beckman (1998) and Mertins
et al. (2001), who focused on the possibility of using dedicated tools for supporting the
implementation of OHS management systems. Despite this, there are very few examples
of application in the field of construction (Kamardeen, 2009), whose specific aim was to
collect information and knowledge to comply with the OHS system more than providing
a proper KM system for safety culture. Moreover, most existing frameworks are not
specifically designed for SMEs.
Starting from these considerations, the scope of the research project was to develop a
general framework and a system prototype to support SMEs in implementing safety
measures (both preventive and protective), improving communication and sharing
strategic knowledge within a group of companies. In the following sections, the main
issues and the deliveries of the research are presented:
• an analysis of the most significant KM experiences (frameworks and systems),
focusing on the elements that can help to improve a safety culture, i.e., corporate
memory and knowledge capitalisation cycle
• an analysis of the main OHS management systems elements in terms of knowledge
creation and enhancement
• the definition of architecture, features and requirements of a pilot implementation of
a KM portal, designed for construction industry
• the result of a survey among a set of selected Italian experts who tested the system
for six months.

3 Knowledge Management systems

Organisations are becoming aware of the importance of intangible assets as key points
and strategic leverages of competitive advantage. KM has so been recognised as a
strategic tool for the development of the company know-how aimed at improving its
performances throughout the optimal management of information and skills
(e.g., Polanyi, 1983; Hamel and Prahalad, 1994; Liebowitz and Beckman, 1998;
Liebowitz and Megbolube, 2003; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995).
In the past few decades, many KM tools have been realised to create, secure, capture
and reuse knowledge, starting from the traditional KPMG method (Parlby, 2000) up to
recent innovative applications (Scholl et al., 2004; Eppler and Burkhard, 2007). Further
interesting experiences that traced the way to modern approaches were in the sector of
 Knowledge Management integration 169

information consulting (Yew Wonga and Aspinwall, 2006), computer-aided process

planning (Denkena et al., 2007), quality management (Ansari et al., 2009) and research
and development (Park and Kim, 2006). There exists also a few examples for the
construction industry, mainly aimed at knowledge capitalisation in the field of project
engineering (Zhang et al., 2009; Kanapeckiene et al., 2010).
At the same time, many KM software tools have been developed as described in
Tyndale (2002). A complete review of KM technologies and applications can be found in
Liao (2003).
The key aspect for the development of an effective KM system is the identification of
the corporate memory. Knowledge can be classified as either tacit or explicit (Nonaka,
1991); Baker et al., 1997; Civi, 2000; Gupta, et al., 2000; Lee and Yang, 2000;
Martensson, 2000; Alavi and Leidner, 2001). Tacit knowledge primarily resides in
peoples’ minds and experiences, relatively difficult to express and codify. On the other
side, explicit knowledge is articulated and structured in some electronic or physical form.
Corporate memory, due to its immaterial essence, is so difficult to manage and can have
many different representations and supports (Saad et al., 2005; Diraby and Zhang, 2006),
as presented in the following classification:
• Paper-based: Written sheets that directly try to collect and explicit corporate
memory into knowledge. This kind of approach is generally used to elaborate
synthesis on experts know-how in a certain environment or to acquire and keep
advices, judgments and lesson learned on specific issues.
• Document-based: Set of all the technical and organisational documents of the
organisation (procedures, protocols, instructions, technical specifications, etc.).
Typically, knowledge is difficult to extract from these kind of documents: the
construction of a corporate memory has to start from the classification and
indexation of the documentation with an adequate interface to extract information
and grant future access to users. Document management systems and information
retrieval techniques are the main tools that can support a document-based
knowledge.
• Knowledge-based: Framework of acquisition and storage of organisational
knowledge that support users’ daily activities and decision making in complex
environment. Through an accurate representation and a systematic management of
necessary information, it’s possible to generate explicit and structured knowledge
with the help of business intelligence systems (workflow modelling and reporting,
OLAP and data mining techniques).
• Case-based: Consolidation of past experiences through their explicit representation
to allow users’ future comparisons. Main target is to spread knowledge of experts,
concentrating know-how in case studies so to grant a continuous evolution through
the integration of new experiences in memory.
• Distributed: Particular configuration with a deep collaboration and sharing of
explicit and tacit knowledge among groups and teams of an organisation. This can be
enabled by company portals, groupware, knowledge maps and best practise maps
that align different information systems and place in a common clouded experience.
Once the form and the requirements of knowledge storage are defined, it’s necessary to
determine the most opportune technique of knowledge representation to start a systematic
170 M. Fargnoli et al.

process of feeding, basing on specific codes as KADS (Kingston, 1998; Allsopp et al.,
2002; Crowther and Hartnett, 2005; MASK Benmahamed et al., 2005; MOKA Brimble
and Sellini, 2000). The knowledge capitalisation cycle proposed by Grundstein et al.,
2003) can so be applied to ensure a systematic approach to the acquisition, creation and
management of corporate memory (Figure 1). The cycle represents the process of
capitalisation of strategic knowledge, which is essential to successfully carry out
processes and activities of the company core-business, through five stages:
• Locate: Define a detailed map of company knowledge (in terms of sources and
topics) to enable an opportune management of its architecture, features and value.
• Preserve: Identify supports to the preservation of corporate memory as for
modelling, formalisation and conservation tools.
• Enhance: Increase knowledge value, putting it in the service of the development and
of the expansion of the company, through a controlled dissemination process.
• Actualise: Knowledge is evaluated, standardised and enriched with both users’ and
external experience to remove and update old memory and protect coherence,
continuously combining and integrating new knowledge in a dynamic and extended
corporate memory.
• Manage: Determine policies and rules of interaction among the stages of the cycle to
control processes activities that enable the capitalisation of knowledge at strategic,
tactic and operational levels.

Figure 1 Knowledge Capitalisation Cycle (see online version for colours)

Source: Grundstein et al. (2003)

4 KM and OHS management systems

The latest review of BS-OHSAS 18001 (2007) standards and ILO-OHS (2001) guidelines
contain direct references to knowledge issues, underlining relationships between
 Knowledge Management integration 171

knowledge and safety management. To perform the integration between these two
systems, the model proposed by the ILO was followed as it clearly expresses the
cross-contamination on the different stages of implementation:
• policy and organising
• planning and implementation
• evaluation
• action for improvement.

4.1 Policy and organising

In a KM system, the transformation of tacit knowledge (owned by individuals) into
explicit knowledge (owned by the company) is a crucial process. Tacit and explicit
knowledge in the area OHS (Sherehiy and Karwowski, 2006) are summarised in Table 1.

Table 1 Explicit and tacit knowledge in OHS

Explicit knowledge Tacit knowledge

Accident records Safety engineer’s experience
Safety regulations Safety hazard recognition
Safety guidelines Related to practical aspects
Theories and axioms Perceptual and cognitive skills
Company records Physical experience
Rules of thumb
Intuition and synthesis of facts
Not enough to provide a safe working
Difficult to capture
condition
Source: Sherehiy (2006)

Actions aimed at acquiring workers knowledge and skills become very important in this
stage: the company should identify which skills are needed to assure a proper and safe
execution of working activities and which of them are already available. The company
knowledge has to be analysed, classified and combined to provide easy-to-use databases
concerning the so-called best practises and ‘lessons learned’ (Weber et al., 2001) for the
industry, with the final aim of developing knowledge storage units for all workers.
The adoption of a proper OHS policy should grant the knowledge sharing throughout the
organisation by dedicated training sessions, meetings, etc.

4.2 Planning and implementation

A successful OHS management system starts from sharing system outputs among the
company and its stakeholders. In this way, it is possible to make them aware of their own
responsibilities and to facilitate the transfer of knowledge and acquired experiences.
During the implementation of an OHS management system, it is essential to locate and
grant access to information from various sources, filter unwanted or irrelevant ones,
172 M. Fargnoli et al.

integrate and adapt them over time to the users’ needs. The use of ‘intelligent agents’
(Tyndale, 2002; Xiaoqing, 2006) seems to be the most suitable way to facilitate
knowledge gathering, sharing and creation. Moreover, the OHS system has to be
supported by specific procedures concerning risk prevention and control, also in
emergency cases. These procedures concern the following aspects:
• employees, workspaces, equipment and operations
• dangerous materials and stocks localisation
• measurement, control and system back-up
• analysis of system criticalities
• emergency situations training and feedback.
Besides, specific tools for training and communication, regarding both safety in
workplaces and operative instructions, are required.

4.3 Evaluation
Health and safety performance assessment is the basis of the continual improvement of
an OHS management system. KM tools aimed at comparing and combining information
collected from different sources (both internal and external) can be used for monitoring
and evaluating health and safety aspects, such as:
• investigation on incidents, accidents (i.e., incidents with injured workers), near
misses, occupational diseases and their impact on company’s activities
• review and audit of the management system.
In detail, in this stage, individual knowledge has to be transferred into company memory,
allowing analysis and comparison of all information coming from different sources,
such as performance indicators, statistics of significant events, workers’ reports on
specific facts (e.g., working procedures, working environment, work organisation,
relationships with colleagues and managers, etc.), safety managers’ reports, external
stakeholders’ feedbacks, etc.

4.4 Improvement
In accordance with the ILO approach, it is necessary to periodically verify the system
performances to implement both corrective and preventive actions. In this sense,
an effective KM system enhances the use of the audit process: according to criticality and
risk types, internal or external audits may help the review process of safety management
system, thus achieving the continual improvement objective. For this reason,
it is important to define specific procedures to properly manage data and information
derived from audits and all other assessment activities carried out at different company
levels. Knowledge captured in this stage must be correctly analysed and classified,
with the goal of updating the company memory. In particular, the analysis is aimed to
weight all collected data and give them the right importance. For instance, workers’
feedbacks, even though derived from informal communications, are sometimes as
important as official reports.
 Knowledge Management integration 173

5 The pilot study: development of the ANZEN system

Starting from the theoretical issues presented in the previous sections, the research
approach was developed, tailoring and adapting such themes to a set of SMEs partners of
the construction industry, throughout the following activities:
• analysis of the main problems related to the application of health and safety
requirements in construction field
• analysis of law and standard requirements at operational level (e.g., instructions,
registrations, workers information, etc.), focusing the attention on procedures and
prescriptive documents needed for risk assessment
• identification of equipment, appliances, devices and PPEs.
In detail, the output of the first steps of analysis brought to light the main problems
affecting SMEs in the application of safety requirements and provided information
concerning types of most common:
• accidents that caused injuries (i.e., falls from heights, accidents in using scrapers or
cranes, collapse structures, hits by working materials)
• non-conformities (omissions in risk assessment, mistakes in risk evaluation due to
cross-interference of different activities, mistakes and failures of maintenance
operations (Kwo-Wei et al., 2000)).
Data obtained from all the above-mentioned activities were processed and distinguished
in explicit and tacit knowledge. Most of them, needless to say, belong to the explicit
knowledge category (e.g., accidents occurrence). Instead, as far as tacit knowledge is
concerned, it emerged that its relevance is very different from one company to another,
depending on workers skills and experience; furthermore, this kind of knowledge is often
neither shared within the company, nor structured as a company know-how.
The next step of the research were so attempted to transform this information into
explicit knowledge by means of a user-friendly KM tool that could interact with the
planning and reviewing cycle of OHS management systems for:
• transferring tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge
• combining knowledge items (from separate explicit knowledge to systematic explicit
knowledge)
• supporting safety communication’s processes effectively.
As the final users were supposed to be SMEs with limited budget and capability, the
initiative have to be presented as a zero-cost and high-return investment. Practically,
its main features grant a standardisation of all the mandatory documents for safety
compliance and, on the other side, a strong increase in corporate memory and knowledge
by the networking of different SMEs whose contributions are directly harmonised by
ISPESL. In fact, the pilot application, ANZEN OHS KM System, is a Web portal
(developed in MS Sharepoint) that allows accesses to different users from different sites.
Its architecture consists of an OHS Document Management Layer and a KM Layer.
The first has the role to trace and store documents: each section and module, through
a set of input masks, helps in collecting data needed to generate OHS documents
174 M. Fargnoli et al.

and allows versioning and repository functions, where every entity is described in terms
of its characteristics (i.e., workman, activities and sites) and can be tagged with a specific
relation to significant knowledge themes (i.e., maintenance, diagnostic, environment,
emergency management).
The second layer, through a map of connections of all the metadata created on the
first layer, presents an indexed search engine that allows user to navigate structured
information, company memory and exploit distributed knowledge. To this extent, every
partner of the research acted in a collaborative process where corporate memories of
different organisations were put in common to enhance knowledge capitalisation and,
through the features of the system, enable specific support in:
• providing safety instructions about risks of the most common working activities
• selecting the proper equipment and related PPEs, depending on the specific activity
• providing documents of OHS (e.g., risk assessment, temporary works registrations,
etc.)
• registering accidents and near-misses, to build up a cause-effect database, able to
improve both the risk assessment activities (e.g., modifying the frequency and or the
magnitude of a certain risk), as well as the information and instructions for workers.
In the following sections, the architecture and the characteristics of the two different
layers are presented in details.

6 ANZEN – OHS document management system

The purpose of this layer is to support the implementation of a standardised OHS

management system, improving the level of communication and information concerning
safety issues within the company. Thanks to the support of SMEs of the construction
industry, which provided a set of procedures, guidelines and documents of interest,
a document management system was designed to fulfil a set of minimum requirements
according to international standards. Starting from the compliance requisites to national
laws, the system has to work as an informative support to safety culture and, in particular,
to risk analysis as a strategic source of knowledge sharing: critical issues that arose in
different companies’ context can be investigated and shared to improve the ability of
designing preventive and corrective actions.
The document management architecture is shown in Figure 2, where the three main
sections, divided in submodules, represent an access to databases, to feed with data
and information:
• General information: Company organisational structure, employees and working
sites
• Documents: Company safety documents required by OHS laws, according to the jobs
in place, to the risk assessment reports and relative information
• Laws and standards: Collection of all the requirements, standards, regulations and
guidelines applied to the construction industry, regularly updated by ISPESL.
 Knowledge Management integration 175

Figure 2 Map of the OHS document management system (see online version for colours)

The system works both as a content and document management. Compulsory safety
documents, which any company has to issue, can be both stored in these databases
(if previously created) or automatically generated: the input masks to collect data are
connected with specific document templates, arranging information that fit the
requirements of the actual laws. Obviously, this feature can drastically reduce costs of
compliance management.

6.1 General information

This section is dedicated to manage information concerning:
• company, including for example all the registrations to public bodies, number of
employees and type of contracts (e.g., permanent or seasonal, consultants, etc.) and
the organisational structure
• workers, in terms of specific skills, experience and training, planned or executed
• working sites, including data of projects and construction sites, schedule of working
activities at each site, information on materials and equipment.
In particular, all these modules allow both a top-down access, by managers to generate
plans, and a bottom-up interface, enabling workers to download or print instructions
concerning any specific activity.

6.2 Documents
This section was developed to collect all the useful information to manage safety at an
operational level. First, attention was paid to the development of an interactive module
for the definition of the Risk Assessment Report, allowing a general evaluation of all the
risks related to company’s activities and, at the same time, providing information about
measures of prevention and protection.
176 M. Fargnoli et al.

In Figure 3, an example concerning the development of a risk assessment document is

shown. Through the database connections, where most common procedures of the
industry are stored, the system enables users to evaluate risks, PPE, working equipment
and safety instructions.

Figure 3 Risk assessment module (see online version for colours)

Furthermore, an intelligent agent (Figure 4) was implemented to support users in

performing risk estimation for any particular working activity; a database containing the
estimation of probability of occurrence and magnitude of risks related to most common
working tasks is also provided. All the other modules were developed using the same
criteria, where inputs feed different databases of equipment (use and maintenance),
incidents, accidents, near misses, risks, reports and reviews. At this level, different
dedicated intelligent agents support users in selection and decisional processes.

Figure 4 Example of the intelligent agent for supporting risk assessment (see online version
for colours)
 Knowledge Management integration 177

6.3 Laws and standards

The framework includes a specific section concerning safety laws and standards
in the construction industry. The update is guaranteed by a connection with newsletters
and databases of institutional and professional associations, where a feed agent can alert
in case of issue of new regulations, guidelines and documents of interest, etc.

7 ANZEN – Knowledge Managment engine

The KM layer can be presented through the first pilot theme of diagnosis and
maintenance of working equipment.
As a matter of fact, decision-support systems in diagnostics play a strategic role in
any company, due to the ever-increasing complexity of machines and equipment
that require a very demanding process of fault identification. On one hand, it has to be
underlined that the introduction of technological innovation in the company needs
adequate planning of training and information activities to grant effective results by its
use. On the other hand, an adequate level of competences has always to be
combined with practical experience. As many SMEs rarely have enough resources to
dedicate to this issue, innovate approaches have to be investigated.
Needless to say, a KM system can represent a tool to manage and increase
diagnostic and maintenance skills and develop a specific corporate memory on the
relationships among symptoms, faults and causes in a case-based form. Its architecture
can be presented through the logical tools that were implemented in the Web
portal to create the connections among metadata that are indexed by the search
engine:
• Knowledge map: Aimed at analysing the interactions among the stages of the
diagnostic process and the sources of strategic knowledge
• Competences map: Aimed at analysing the interactions among sources and features
of the strategic knowledge and the human resources involved
• Use case diagram: To take into account the role of the human resources in the
process
• Entity-relation model: With the aim of measuring and controlling the level of
intensity of connections among the items (process, knowledge and human
resources).
Such a framework can be generalised and applied to different knowledge themes and
sources.

7.1 Maps of knowledge and competences

The first stage of implementation is the definition of the company memory that has to be
represented in a knowledge map. After an auditing process to define the value of the
knowledge and the different levels of experiences of the personnel, all the sources,
flows, constraints and relations among the information are made explicit.
178 M. Fargnoli et al.

Figure 5 shows the example of the strategic knowledge and its sources in the
diagnostic process as they represent a key issue to reach high performances of efficiency
and effectiveness in the maintenance process.

Figure 5 Strategic knowledge of the diagnostic process (see online version for colours)

Then, a correlation matrix can combine the elements of the strategic knowledge with the
skills of the personnel, in terms of competences for any role, with an assessment of the
required degree of knowledge:
• Level 0 (unconsciousness): Not aware of the subject
• Level 1 (consciousness): Basic and theoretical knowledge
• Level 2 (comprehension): Low level of practical knowledge, able to discuss with an
expert
• Level 3 (applied knowledge): Medium level of practical knowledge, able to work in
autonomy
 Knowledge Management integration 179

• Level 4 (competence): High level of practical knowledge, able to work completely in

autonomy
• Level 5 (specialist): High level of practical knowledge, able to work completely in
autonomy, recognised as an expert.
This tool (an excerpt is shown in Table 2) also allows further analysis and surveys to
identify improvements and fill evident gaps on actual human resources.

Table 2 Example of a map of competences and knowledge

Maintenance manager
Strategic knowledge Feature of experience and knowledge 1 2 3 4 5
Structure of Machines
machines and groups Groups
Components
Relations among Library of symptoms
symptoms, machines Relations among symptoms – components
and failure modes
Failure modes
Criticalities
Relations symptoms – failure modes
Diagnostic Methods of research
techniques Analysis of results
Execution of tests
Relations among Analysis of inconveniences
failure modes and Causes of failures
causes
Relations symptoms – causes of failure
Wear and obsolescence
Set of interventions Working and safety procedures
Ability of execution
Structure and functions of machines

7.2 Use case diagram

The ‘use case diagram’ shows the interactions between users and the KM system,
capturing all the visible functions and defining all the services associated to the events.
In such a kind of graph, knots represent the actors and the use cases, while arches
show the dependences between actors and use cases, the connections among use cases,
the extension or inclusions of use cases at different levels and generalisation of use cases.
In Figure 6, this framework was generated for all the different profiles of the human
resources of the diagnostic process.
180 M. Fargnoli et al.

Figure 6 Scheme of the use case diagram

7.3 Entity-relationship model

The ‘entity-relationship model’ is a tool that represents the conceptual structure of a set
of data that, together with the other tools, contribute to let knowledge become explicit,
showing the connection of the entities that represent a domain.
As shown in Figure 7, this model presents the intensity of correlation among all the
elements of the diagnostic and maintenance process, where its main elements are:
• Entities: Classes of objects with common properties and autonomous existence. An
occurrence of entity is an object of the class it represents
 Knowledge Management integration 181

• Relationships: Connection of entities. The number of entities connected is the degree

of association
• Attributes: Any entity is described by many attributes, depending on the level of
details it needs to be represented. All the entities of the same type have the same
attributes, whose values belong to a pre-defined domain
• Cardinality of associations: In any relation between two entities, the cardinality
addresses the minimum and maximum number of connections that an occurrence can
present.

Figure 7 Example of entity-relation model

182 M. Fargnoli et al.

8 Results

To validate the ANZEN tool, a survey was carried out in 2009, involving 20 senior
consultants and 20 managers of the set of SMEs partners that received, as participants
to the research, a six-month trial of the document management layer and the
diagnostic/maintenance prototype. At the end of the trial period, they were asked to
express their opinion regarding the knowledge capitalisation stages and give their
impressions about the functionality of the system, as well as about its user-friendliness.
In detail, the evaluation of the system was based on its ability to satisfy 10 issues:
a score system ranged between 1 (very poor – possible improvement) and 4 (very good –
the research target was achieved) was used. Results obtained are summarised in Table 3.
It has to be remarked that the provided periodical licence is a negligible expense if
compared to standard costs of compliance with OHS management systems.
Then, software implementation has an immediate return on investment.

Table 3 Preliminary results concerning the use of the software

Issues Evaluation
1 Support to fitting compliance requirements ☺☺☺☺
2 Support to generate compulsory documents ☺☺☺
3 Support to OHS system implementation ☺☺☺
4 Support to daily management of the working site through acquired knowledge ☺☺
5 Support to document and report registration and versioning ☺
6 Support to workman awareness ☺☺
7 Support to workman training ☺☺
8 Standardisation of sources of information ☺☺☺☺
9 Evolution of corporate memory through case-based knowledge sharing ☺☺☺☺
10 System usability ☺☺

9 Conclusions

The implementation of management tools for OHS showed that the most critical factors
are related to management of different types of knowledge: individual knowledge,
structured knowledge and company knowledge. The company memory should collect all
these information, skills and experiences concerning safety management and provide
them to workers. The model developed is an attempt to give a proper solution to this
problem through the following aspects:
• implementation of a dynamic risk management approach for safety compliance and
improvement, reducing at the same time companies efforts and costs
• improvement of the knowledge transfer process within the company and through
different companies, thus supporting training of workers and technical education
 Knowledge Management integration 183

• increase the diffusion of safety procedures throughout the company, particularly

important for SMEs due to the different situations and environments in which they
usually operate.
The reduction of the risk of overloading the information system and generating conflicts
of data, the support in the definition of an OHS management system in compliance with
requirements of international standards and the high level of assistance granted by
intelligent agents in carrying out evaluation and selection processes (i.e., risk analysis and
equipment maintenance) are the main results achieved with this brief experimentation.
Further results (expected by all the experts) will be showed after a longer period of
validation, which should allow us to gather more detailed information about the
effectiveness of the model (e.g. in terms of reduction of time expenditure in operational
tasks, reduction of mistakes and errors in working activities, higher motivation of
workers in safety prevention, etc.), as well as to collect more precise reports on the
occurrence of incidents, accidents and near misses. When these data will be available,
they might represent a significant base for the risk estimation of a large number of
specific events, in terms of occurrence and relevance. The system will act to clearly
identify and schedule workplace inspections, audits and walkthrough surveys for critical
areas, with a continuous refinement of decisional processes.

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