Why DOTs Need Knowledge Management

State DOTs rely on the skills and experience of their workforces to plan, fund, design, construct and maintain multi-modal transportation systems. Knowledge about what to do, when and how to do it, AND what not to do is critical to success – and much of this knowledge resides only in the heads of employees, especially the most experienced employees.

This Guide was developed because Knowledge Management (KM) offers promising solutions to DOT challenges, yet relatively few DOTs have implemented agency-wide approaches to KM. The Guide is intended to help DOT leaders examine the business case for undertaking or strengthening KM in their agencies. It introduces a variety of KM tools and techniques that a DOT could apply, and provides a roadmap for DOTs wishing to experiment or get started with implementing an agency-wide approach to KM. Finally, it provides links to resources that agencies can use to develop and strengthen their KM activities over time.

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Roadmap to the Guide

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Understanding KM

Implementing KM

Create a KM >Implementation Plan
Monitor Results

Learning from Experience

References
Additional Resources

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Select from the options below to learn more about the KM topics you're most interested in.

  • What is Knowledge Management?

    Organizations use Knowledge Management (KM) techniques to make best use of one of their most important assets: people. KM is not new – early efforts date back to the 1980’s. Many private and public sector organizations have programs in place – including USDOT and several state DOTs. Read more...
  • Why Should DOTs be Interested in KM?

    DOTs are facing changing missions, tightening resources, and greater workforce turnover. Lack of bench strength is creating risks that can be lessened through KM techniques. Without a strategy for growing and sharing expertise, DOTs face a steady decline in their performance and ability to adapt to meet future needs. Read more...
  • What is the Payoff from KM?

    KM can be used to improve productivity, shorten the learning curve for new employees, and lessen risks of rookie mistakes. Workforce transitions can result in loss of important institutional knowledge – KM can help agencies to stem these losses and avoid lost productivity associated with “reinventing the wheel.” Read more...
  • What Does it Mean to Implement KM?

    There are a variety of KM techniques to choose from – that ensure that employees are developing, sharing and applying knowledge. These include using workforce planning to identify gaps in capabilities, and Communities of Practice to provide a forum for peer to peer knowledge transfer. Read more...
  • What is Knowledge?

    Knowledge isn’t the same as information. It exists inside the human brain and provides the basis for making decisions and taking actions. Read more...
  • How Do You Manage Knowledge?

    Managing knowledge means taking stock of what you have – and then taking deliberate steps to build it, leverage it and sustain it. Knowledge capture and knowledge transfer are two important knowledge management activities. Read more...
  • Different Types of Knowledge

    There are many different types of knowledge that you may want to build and share within your organization. Everyone is familiar with the term “know-how”(knowledge about how to do things) – but there is also know-what (knowledge about what to do in different situations), know-who (knowledge about who does what) and know-why (knowledge about why things are done the way they are). Read more...
  • Knowledge and Information Management

    One common conception of knowledge management is that it involves building a database of important agency documents. In fact, building content or “knowledge repositories” is more of an information management strategy than a knowledge management strategy. But information and knowledge management can be viewed as part of a unified life cycle. Read more...
  • The Business Case for KM at a DOT

    DOTs can use KM to foster innovation, improve delivery of transportation projects and leverage increasingly limited resources. Key benefits include improving efficiency and effectiveness and reducing vulnerability to employee transitions. Read more...
  • How KM Can Help

    KM can help to create a stronger workforce – with skills that are aligned with current and emerging needs. It can build a culture in which employees collaborate to identify, share and apply important insights and techniques for accomplishing work in a more effective manner. Read more...
  • A Holistic, Agency-Wide Approach

    A holistic, agency-wide approach to knowledge management ensures that the right combination of techniques is applied to tackle an agency’s most pressing needs. Read more...
  • What Does an Agency-Wide KM Approach Look Like?

    An agency-wide KM approach has four key elements: leadership and direction, collaboration and communities, knowledge codification and dissemination, and succession management/talent management. Read more...
  • KM Strategies

    Key elements of a KM strategy often involve the following: KM Leadership and Direction; Social Learning and Communities; Knowledge Codification and Dissemination; and Succession and Talent Management. Read more...
  • Knowledge Management Techniques

    There are two main types of KM techniques: Codification and Personalization. Examples of codification approaches include online communities of practice, lessons learned/best practice systems, web-based searchable knowledge repositories, continuity books, expertise locator systems, and the like. Examples of personalization approaches include mentoring programs, job shadowing, job rotation, onboarding, phased retirement programs, and the like. Read more...
  • How to Measure KM Results

    KM results can be measured through a combination of surveys, interviews, tracking logs and other methods. It is important to include both quantitative and qualitative results. Read more...
  • KM Outcomes

    KM metrics should be defined to represent the outcomes that your organization hopes to achieve. For example, let’s say you implement an expertise directory to get people to consult with internal agency experts before re-inventing something on their own. You should collect metrics that allow you to show how many people are using this directory, and how they are piggybacking on prior work. Read more...
  • Selected References

    Bibliography of references about KM at transportation agencies and KM practices of interest to transportation agencies. Read more...
  • Transportation Agencies with
    KM Initiatives

    An index of agencies that have implemented KM, with agency KM contacts. Read more...

This site is intended to help transportation agencies examine the business case for undertaking or strengthening knowledge management activities.

The content for this KM Guide was originally developed under NCHRP Project 20-98, and is currently being maintained by the TRB Knowledge Management Task Force. The original material will be published as an NCHRP Report.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF SPONSORSHIP

NCHRP Project 20-98 was sponsored by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, in cooperation with the Federal Highway Administration, and was conducted in the National Cooperative Highway Research Program, which is administered by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies.

DISCLAIMER

The opinions and conclusions expressed or implied herein are not necessarily those of the Transportation Research Board, the National Academies, or the program sponsors.