Sharing knowledge effectively across boundaries, between projects and organisations Webinar, 23rd February 2016

1
Sharing knowledge
effectively across
boundaries, between
projects and organisations
Webinar, Tuesday 23rd Feb 2016

Today we will hear from:
 Andy Wall
Chief Technologist - Knowledge and Standards at United Utilities
 Adrian Malone
Director & Group Head of Knowledge Management & Collaboration
at Atkins
 Michael Norton
Digital Community & Knowledge Manager at Knowledge Hub
 Martin Fisher
Head of Knowledge Management at Industry Forum
2

Practicalities
 Please feel free to use the Questions facility in the
webinar browser window
 We will deal with as many questions as we can during
the webinar, after our presentations
 A full recording of the webinar, and answers to all
questions will be available shortly on the APM website
3

Andy Wall – United Utilities
Copyright © United Utilities Water Limited 2015
If we all knew
what we all
know!

If we all knew what
we all Know
?, leverage, lost count, systematic
• Introduction
• Knowledge Management Context
• The Challenge we face
• The development of RoCK
• The Rock process
• Summary
• Q&A

A little bit about United
Utilities (UU)
• United Utilities holds a licence to
provide water and sewage services to
around seven million people in North
West England.
• These services are carefully regulated
by the water regulator
• between 2010-2015 UU invested more
than £3 billion to improve the water
and wastewater infrastructure and the
environment across the North West
• Since 1990 we've invested appox
£4000 for every household in the
North West
• 42,000 kilometres of water pipes,
from Cumbria to Cheshire
• 76,000 kilometres of sewers
• 569 wastewater treatment works
• 94 water treatment works
• 56,000 hectares of catchment
land

A little bit about me
My Name is Andy Wall
That’s probably enough

What is Knowledge
Management
“…..the process of capturing, developing,
sharing, and effectively using organisational
knowledge.It refers to a multi-disciplined approach to achieving
organisational objectives by making the best use of knowledge.

How long?
We've been at this a while –
But I wonder if anyone can
guess just how long ?

Click to edit Master text styles
Click to add title
“…..recording our knowledge on cave walls.”
“ …when we moved the recorded knowledge stayed behind”

Success ?
So what does it look like when
we all know what we all know?

The Borg were a pseudo-species of cybernetic beings,. No single individual truly existed within the Borg Collective as all Borg
were linked into a hive mind. Their ultimate goal was the attainment of 'perfection' through the forcible assimilation of diverse
sentient species, technologies, and knowledge.
If we all knew what we all know
What would things look
like?
Resistance is futile

Our Approach to
Knowledge Management
13
‘Creating Value by
Sharing what we know’
Its about working
together easily
Finding up to date
information fast
Tapping into the
collective
experience of UU
Sharing Lessons
Learned
Knowing who to ask

Sharing Technical
Knowledge.
DSEAR Working Group
Designing for Safety
Working Group
Wastewater Network
Technical Liaison
Knowledge Communities and Subject Matter
Experts (SME’s)
Codified Knowledge
Tacit Knowledge
Lessons learnt, continuous
improvement
RoCK

Background
The Challenge
• Massive capital program looming (>£3bn)
• No way to systematically capture or disseminate good ideas /
good practice
• New external Capital delivery Partners on board for the next 5
years
• Incentivised to innovate
• Less design done internally
• Needed to link learning / knowledge to the specific assets we
were building
• Estimators don’t update their cost curves for projects in real
time (often 12 months after a job had finished on site)
• Need To communicate the opportunities for savings or H&S
improvements

Lessons Learned
Lessons Learnt Tracker
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2
2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
Open Closed Tracker
Using the Left hand scale,
•the yellow bars show the
number of Lessons opened in
each month
• the green bars show the
number of Lessons closed in
the month.
Using the Right hand scale
•The red line tracks the
Cumulative number of Open
Lessons

Reuse of Company Knowledge (RoCK)
Re-use opportunities from the past
Capture innovative thinking and the cost
savings associated to ensure our standards
are kept up to date and the assets of the future
incorporate savings realised in the past!

Push / Pull ALL opportunities into ALL future
Projects
RoCK
Project lifecycle
Opportunities
Push
Pull

Current Phase: ‘Build’
Relational Database - built ready for content
RoCK
Database
Good Ideas (opportunities)
Input Form
Project
Opportunities
Output Form
Standard
Opportunities
Output Form
Governance
Opportunities
Output Form

Where are we up to?
• Not as far as we should be
• Excuses, Excuses
• We’ve demonstrated the concept using historical
content collected for other purposes
• We have built it into our PDS and ways of working
• We are now going to start collecting new content as
AMP6 projects start
• Our aim is to eventually build a self service system
• But it might need to be a manual activity until its
embedded

Re-using
Knowledge
How do we…
How do we…
RoCK
Benefits
Consistently apply
the right
knowledge, to the
right situation, at
the earliest
opportunity
Collect more of the
knowledge from
our organisation to
ensure our
standards continue
to reflect our
aspirations and
best working
practices
Developed to resolve some familiar problems
that exist in many organisations…..
Knowing what we do -
Doing what we know
Align opportunities
to individual
projects (assets)
in the forthcoming
capital program.
Align opportunities
to appropriate
standards so that
they can be
considered when
being reviewed.
?
?
!!!
££
‘s
££
‘s

Reducing costs across the project lifecycle
NEED OPERATE
BREAK
GROUND
STRATEGY DESIGN SPECIFICATION BUILD IMPLEMENT
Solution design and specification develops as the definition becomes more and more detailed
BETTER
STRATEGIES
BETTER
SOLUTIONS
IMPROVED
TECHNOLOGIES
[ STRAP ] [ ABMs ] [ ENGINEERING ]
SOLUTION
IMPROVEMENTS
[ CAPITAL DELIVERY]
Innovation is ‘delivered’ across the project / solution lifecycle
EFFICIENCIES
[ ENGINEERING ]
FCO
EPO
WATER
ACT
INNOVATION

Innovation and
standardisation ?
Innovation and Standards are complimentary not
conflicting and each bring benefits …
Standards = Exploitation of knowledge
Programme efficiency (not reinventing the wheel),
benefitting from lessons learnt
Innovation = Exploration of knowledge
new ideas; better, faster cheaper solutions, improvements
in standards

Agile and Knowledge
Management
APM Knowledge SIG
Webinar 23rd February 2016
Adrian Malone
Group Head of Knowledge Management and
Collaboration
23 February 2016 29

Agile / lean thinking – some key principles
23 February 2016 30
Focus on behaviour and changing culture
• Bold and experimental
• Minimum Viable Product (MVP) - testing hypothesis
• Use of ‘fail fast’ and pivot
• Short bursts of focussed effort (sprints) co-ordinated by scrum master
• Daily stand-up meetings and retrospectives
Having the customer ‘in the room’
• Use of personas
• Early testing and feedback
• Product Owner prioritises the work (backlog)

The future is already here — it's
just not very evenly distributed.
William Gibson

Future Work Skills 2020
23 February 2016 32

Things are getting more complex…

Digital Disruption: agile + lean thinking
23 February 2016 35

Implications
23 February 2016 36
“The traditional way in organizations is to look five years ahead and make plans for
the next year… we should think like farmers: look 20 years ahead and plan only for
the next day. One must look far out to decide which… crops to grow… but it makes
no sense to plan at the beginning of the year the precise date for harvest...a farmer
who would stick rigidly to plan, instead of sensing and adjusting to reality would
quickly grow hungry.” Laloux: The Antifragile Organisation

Implications
23 February 2016 37
"Conventional initiatives are like the more familiar Trojan Horse. Big, lumbering, slow
moving. It takes a lot of people to move it and it is very hard to get it to change direction
without a lot of effort.
"As we deployed low cost small tools and kicked off little initiatives at the BBC we
began to describe our approach as deploying Trojan Mice, a metaphor borrowed from
British consultant Peter Fryer.
"Set up small, unobtrusive inexpensive and autonomous tools and practices set them
running and cajole and nudge them until they begin to work out where to go and why.”
Euan Semple: Organisations Don’t Tweet, People Do

Observations
23 February 2016 38
• Importance of keeping the customer in the room and responsible for
prioritisation
• Incremental change - ‘Trojan Mice’
• Agile is not ‘fast and without rules’ - there is structure and robust
prioritisation is needed

Thank You
Adrian Malone
@adrianmalone
23 February 2016 39

khub.net | support@khub.net
How social collaboration tools changed the
way we share in the public sector

2006

KM
Strategy

Communities
of Practice

Social Media

Social media isn’t
where the real answers lie

Twitter is only 140
characters

Facebook,
you might get a like

Youtube, it’s ok if I want
instructions on how to
build a cabinet.

When you do a search
online for help you will
end up in a forum or
online community as they
have been around since
the start of the internet

Raise your profile
Discover knowledge to help your job
Connect with people like you
Save time and money
Generate ideas to drive improvement

75% of businesses say online
collaboration tools will be
“important” or “somewhat
important” to their business during
the next 12 months. Clinked.com

Blending organisation
formal knowledge with
people’s informal
knowledge

What has made this
successful?
People

Digital Skills

“Knowledge Hub has sparked innovation and brought together a community that
care about the same things, meaning wider opportunities are available.” Kirklees
Council
“Using the Planning Advisory Service (PAS) group forum would save you money if
you were going elsewhere to pay for this expertise. “ Taunton Deane Borough
Council
“Knowledge Hub is niche. It’s there for the work that I do allowing me to connect
with people up and down the country.” Broadland District Council

Work socially, Work smarter
For more information contact: support@khub.net
michael.norton@khub.net

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at an APM event
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Sharing knowledge effectively across boundaries, between projects and organisations Webinar, 23rd February 2016

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