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1. Introduction
This paper concerns a challenging topic within the construction industry and the knowledge management (KM) discipline. The issue that is examined is knowledge transfer (KT) between building operation and project management of construction projects to ensure appropriate performance of new facilities.
According to literature, the involvement of facilities management (FM) expertise in a construction project from its early phases is of great importance (Jaunzens et al., 2001; Jensen, 2009; Hansen et al., 2010; Meng, 2013). Although it might be assumed that KT could be approached in the same way as it is in other kind of industries, the nature of the construction industry makes it difficult. Construction firms move from one building project to another, which usually differs substantially from the previous one. The lack of distinct similarities between these building projects makes the project management team more reluctant to consider, extract and reuse knowledge that has been acquired during past projects (Lê, 2007).
The purpose of the paper is to answer the following research question:
How knowledge concerning operation and maintenance (O&M) of buildings can be stored and transferred between the parties responsible for building operation and new building projects?
Besides, the paper aims to clarify the KT tools and processes that have been developed and are being used within the case organisation.
The paper is based on a case study of the FM organisation of the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) called DTU Campus Service (CAS). They are in charge of management, operation and development of all the existing facilities of the university as well as a huge construction programme of new buildings at its main campus, following a number of mergers with former independent institutions. The case study examines the KT between the building O&M department and the department responsible for new buildings projects – the Real Estate Project Management Office (PMO). The methodology of the study is described in Section 2 followed by a literature review on KM, focussing on theory on KT related to the construction industry in Section 3. The case study is presented in Section 4 followed by discussion in Section 5 and conclusion in Section 6.
2. Methodology
CAS was chosen for the case study, because they currently are one of the...