Consultant's Corner: Knowledge Management — A Strategic Plan For Water Utilities

By Lee Odell, PE, Water Treatment Global Technology Lead, CH2M HILL

What the heck is knowledge management?  My definition is fostering the use of the right information within your organization to make good decisions.  However, that is not the only definition of knowledge management; in fact, knowledge management decisions are like names: everyone has their own.

Knowledge management is a term that was first introduced in the early 1990s by Karl-Erik Sveiby, CEO of Sveiby Knowledge Associates in Helsinki.  Sveiby’s definition is “the art of creating value from intangible assets.”  The SAS Institute defines knowledge management as a system-based approach capable of capturing and leveraging institutional memory. Levinson describes knowledge management as the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge based assets. In a Water Research Foundation publication titled Application of Knowledge Management to Utilities, it is described as the processes and tools that allow businesses to increase workflow efficiency while reducing employee workload and labor hours.

Whatever your definition of knowledge management is, it is worth paying some attention to.  Even though utilities collect inordinate amounts of information, through customer information systems (CIS), computer maintenance management systems (CMMS), laboratory information management systems (GIS), supervisory control and data acquisition systems (SCADA), and geographic information systems (GIS), it is believed that the most significant information in a utility (or other business), is carried around in the heads of the employees.  How much?  Some experts say 70%, others 80% to 90%.

Knowledge is divided into things that can be explicitly written, spoken or portrayed (called explicit knowledge) and tacit knowledge which drives our decisions, but largely remains unspoken.  Explicit knowledge is like the proverbial tip of the iceberg.  Tacit knowledge is the deeper understanding that all of us rely on to make decisions.  For example, an operator with 20 years of experience at a water treatment plant gets an alarm that headloss if building up quickly on a filter that he just backwashed 6 hours ago.  By the time he reads the alarm, he has already thought through the most likely causes, and the most efficient way to deal with the alarm.

So what is the key to managing this knowledge?  It is not to try to get all of the information out of people’s heads and onto a computer program, spreadsheet, presentation or white paper.  It is really trying to foster a deeper understanding amongst a larger group of people within your organization so that they share a greater level of tacit knowledge and make better decisions for your organization.

For water utilities that did not have formal a knowledge management program, a recent Water Research Foundation Report, Strategies to Help Drinking Water Utilities Ensure Effective Retention of Knowledge, found the objectives of a system, if used would be to:

• Capture valuable knowledge before employees leave the organization.
• Reduce the time to competence of new employees hired.
• Bring new leaders up to speed more quickly.
• Capture project lessons learned within the organization.
• Facilitate knowledge sharing culture with the organization.
• Provide mentoring or apprenticeship opportunities for newer employees with more experienced employees.
• Prevent loss of business knowledge.
• Prevent loss of technical knowledge.
• Prevent loss of operational knowledge.
• Develop or redesign education and training programs.

So how do you go about fostering that type of atmosphere?  Surely there is no one right answer, but the utilities that have had success in this area, all share some commonalities.  Those utilities manage knowledge by:

1. Aligning initiatives to the organization’s overall mission and goals.

For example, Hilton Head Public Service District (PSD) recently completed two initiatives focused on developing more in house knowledge on financial management and rate setting, and on water quality improvements — both areas identified by their board and goals for the organization.

2. Identifying the ‘real’ knowledge needed to support the success of the organization.

Here sometimes outside experts or analytics can help you find the right information needed to make decisions.  Most often, the information you need, you are probably already collecting, but it may get lost in the huge volume of data being collected.  For Hilton Head PSD’s financial management initiative they started with a cost of service model developed by an outside expert, then customized it for their own use, and have continued to use it on a routine basis among their internal community of practice.  For their water quality initiative, they had an outside expert come in and help them identify the water quality parameters and data that they should routinely (monthly and annual) focus on.

3. Setup the people, processes and tools needed to collect, store, organize, and analyze

With knowledge management, one of the over-riding goals is often to develop greater understanding amongst a larger pool of people, so often a community of practice is identified by the organization.  These communities of practice can be small or large, but they are charged with owning a set of information, and developing a way to share knowledge and experiences.  In many of CH2M HILL’s water facilities, one of the tools we use is an electronic O&M manual that can be accessed by all of the operators.  The electronic O&M manual is a tool to store standard operating procedures (developed by the operations staff), training videos, drawings, vendor information, and many other types of information.  The electronic O&M manual can link to CMMS work orders, and SCADA to provide the operators equal access to operational knowledge at their fingertips.  In the case of Hilton Head PSD, the financial management community of practice was three people, who all trained on their financial and rate model and use it regularly.  For their water quality initiative, their community of practice included operations and laboratory staff who summarize key water quality information on a monthly basis.

4. Share the knowledge

Organizing a routine way to share information among the utilities people that can best make use of it is a key feature of knowledge management.  This can be done informally or formally, but sharing the knowledge in a format that allows a team of people to understand the thinking behind decision making enhances tacit knowledge development.

WIFIA Update from last month’s article:

The Congressional Research Service reports that congress may evaluate six options for implementing a water infrastructure financing innovation act (WIFIA), including:

1. Increasing funding for the State Revolving Fund (SRF) programs in the Clean Water Act (H.R. 3145 in the 112th Congress) and the Safe Drinking Water Act (H.R. 5320 in the 111th Congress),
2. Creating a federal water infrastructure trust fund (H.R. 3145 in the 112th Congress and H.R. 3202 in the 111th Congress),
3. Creating a “Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act” Program, or WIFIA (H.R. 3145 in the 112th Congress),
4. Creating a National Infrastructure Bank (H.R. 402 and S. 652 in the 112^th Congress),
5. Lifting private activity bond restrictions on water infrastructure projects (S. 1813, S. 939 and H.R. 1802 in the 112th Congress), and
6. Reinstating authority for the issuance of Build America Bonds (included in the Administration’s FY2013 budget request).