Technical knowledge consolidation using theory of inventive problem solving

Technical knowledge is a valuable asset for construction companies. The diversity and accumulation of such knowledge on an organizational level contribute to company profitability and growth. This paper discusses a new approach for extracting, consolidating, and then retrieving technical construction knowledge that builds on the contradiction resolution concepts of the theory of inventive problem solving. The approach was used to extract knowledge from a number of lessons learned describing technical construction problems encountered by a major construction company. The approach depends on finding the similarities between technical solutions of problems that belong to different technological domains. These similarities represent the essence of these solutions and are represented using domain-independent terms so that they can be applied to new problems. The outcomes of the knowledge extraction and accumulation process are discussed in the paper to address the feasibility of the proposed approach and its potential benefits and limitations. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9364(2005)131:9(993) CE Database subject headings: Algorithms; Construction management; Elevators; Knowledge-based systems; Silos.