The e-CKMI: the e-COGNOS infrastructure to support KM in the construction industry

This paper describes the e-COGNOS Knowledge Management Infrastructure (e-CKMI) which has been developed in the context of the e-COGNOS IST project aiming at to support KM in the Building and Construction (BC) industry. The e-COGNOS approach is based on the fact that knowledge in BC industry can be classified into three main categories, namely the Domain knowledge (administrative information, standards, technical rules, product databases, etc.), the Corporate knowledge (the intellectual capital of a company, its specific knowledge), and the Project knowledge (the knowledge that each company has about the project as well as the knowledge created by the interaction with other companies). In order to capture and capitalise on this knowledge categorisation, the e-COGNOS project has adopted a ‘layered’ approach to the specification of knowledge-oriented services required from the e-CKMI, where the knowledge is transferred and kept consistent among the layers. The paper presents the requirements considered in the design of the e-CKMI, both conceptual and technical architecture, and the most important implementation-related issues. The current status of the e-CKMI development and future work conclude the paper.