Synthesis Spotlight: Behind the Scenes of DOWL's Operational Excellence Initiative

April 19, 2018 Knowledge Architecture

Featured Guests

Rachel Steer, Chief Administrative Officer, DOWL
Kristin Folmar, Quality Manager, DOWL

Webinar Summary

In 2016, DOWL launched an Operational Excellence (OpEx) program designed to improve project management, enhance client experience, and establish accountability across their 24 offices. DOWL leveraged their Synthesis intranet, The Point, to engage employees across the business in this critical initiative.

In this webinar, you'll learn how DOWL:

Established The Point as the center for content, communications, resources, and training related to OpEx
Developed a user-friendly home for OpEx which includes a graphical landing page linking to key OpEx resources, an OpEx FAQ, and introductory videos
Supported the launch of the OpEx initiative through a series of posts by key executives and project stakeholders
Continued the dialog through posts about new and updated OpEx resources, early wins, and #OpExStories

If you only have a few minutes, we recommend jumping to two highlights: Origin Story of the Operational Excellence (OpEx) Initiative (6:00) and Intranet Tour: The OpEx Community (16:34).

Launching Synthesis @ RS&H

February 15, 2018 Knowledge Architecture

Featured Guests

Jennifer Stutts, VP of Communications, Marketing & Strategy
Krystal Modigell, Marketing Communications Specialist

Webinar Summary

A couple years ago, RS&H was faced with a communications and information access problem.

Many of their 800 employees were struggling to find the information they needed to be effective and to understand what was happening across the business. At the same time, RS&H was preparing to onboard 200 – 300 employees. The management team knew they needed better infrastructure to support their growing workforce.

Today, they are meeting these fundamental business needs for 1,100 employees with Blaze, their Synthesis Intranet.

In this webinar, you’ll learn how RS&H:

Introduced Blaze as the go-to place for “all RS&H” news and dialog
Kept employee’s user experience at the center of their design
Used SMART goals to maintain alignment with stakeholders

If you only have a few minutes, we recommend jumping to two highlights: RS&H’s Knowledge Management Objectives (8:50) and Best Practice 2: Focus on the User (18:40).

Synthesis Spotlight: Online + Offline Learning @ Payette

January 25, 2018 Knowledge Architecture

Featured Guests

Hilary Barlow, Architect and Community Manager at Payette

Webinar Summary

Payette is a design firm that specializes in the healthcare, health science, and academic science markets. Maintaining a competitive advantage in rapidly changing markets means that the Payette team must prioritize continuous learning and development. To maintain a competitive edge, team members must engage in a lot of continuous learning.

In her role as Community Manager for Payette’s Big Science Group, Hilary Barlow has answered a difficult question: What does learning look like for highly skilled professionals, many of whom are already experts in their field?

In this webinar, you’ll learn how Hilary:

Identifies hot topics and good teachers
Convenes the Big Science community
Captures key learnings on Synthesis
Engages community members in the process

If you only have a few minutes, we recommend jumping to two highlights: Introduction to Payette’s Knowledge Groups (9:00) and Big Science’s Monthly Meetings (14:00).

ENR’s Cover Story: Knowledge Management in the AEC Industry

November 29, 2017 Christopher Parsons

We’re excited to share that ENR’s cover story this week is a broad and interesting overview of how Knowledge Management is impacting the AEC Industry.

The article profiles several AEC firms in the KA Connect community including DLR Group, MSA Professional Services, POWER Engineers, Stantec, and Fluor as well as friends of KA Connect like APQC and Columbia University’s Information and Knowledge Strategy program.

The mission of the annual KA Connect Conference is to “Advance the Practice of Knowledge Management in the AEC Industry.” It is so great to see the AEC KM movement get the visibility it deserves and I think now is a great opportunity for us all to take a moment and reflect on all the progress we’ve made on this journey together.

Thank you to the clients, partners, friends, and employees of Knowledge Architecture who make this community possible.

Here’s to many more years of learning and growing together!

Read the Article

Launching Synthesis @ Fuscoe

January 19, 2017 Knowledge Architecture

Featured Guests

Jeff Stempson, Director of Information Technology
Brandon Norton, Senior Graphic Designer

Webinar Summary

This month’s Office Hours featured an intranet tour of Fuscoe Engineering’s Synthesis intranet, ARC. Launching a Synthesis intranet in the fall of 2016 was an important milestone in Fuscoe’s knowledge management journey. Highlights of the new intranet include:

Analog Communities of Practice got a digital home
Disconnected and siloed key information about employees and projects is now accessible to all employees in a single system
Employees can now find fundamental information about how work is done at Fuscoe via a single, informative toolbox

In this webinar, Jeff and Brandon give a tour of Arc and share their insights on brand alignment and employee engagement. If you only have a few minutes, we recommend jumping to two intranet tour highlights: Engineering CADD Standards (21:40) and #AskARC (38:45).

Streamline Your Operations with the Essential Content Checklist

November 7, 2016 Christopher Parsons

Clients often ask us, “what content is essential to a successful intranet?”

Because we have built over 100 intranets for architecture, engineering, and construction firms over the last seven years using Synthesis, Knowledge Architecture is uniquely positioned to answer this question.

We find that this question typically arises when a firm is either:

Preparing for the launch of a new intranet, or
Conducting a content audit of an existing intranet

Both of these events provide an opportunity to step back and evaluate how your intranet can give employees what they need, when they need it. Our Essential Content Checklist will help you do just that.

Establishing a Firmwide Q+A Program Using Synthesis

July 7, 2016 Susan Strom

In this article you’ll learn…

5 Benefits of a Q+A Program
3 Key Roles in a Q+A Program
9 Steps to Roll Out a Q+A Program at Your Firm

“If you can teach people to help themselves you get an additive effect: they not only help each other; they grow themselves as experts. Essentially, you have little experts pop up left and right and they sort of grow on their own. Over time, you raise people up from basic competency towards expert level.” — Jack Chaffin, LMN Architects.

Four years ago LMN Architects hired Jack Chaffin to lead the firm’s transition from CAD-based MicroStation to Revit. They knew they had an expert to guide the process because he’d led similar transitions twice before. Jack’s expertise met such a critical need that after a short while, Jack found that “help desk issues were taking up an increasingly larger portion of [his] energy; taking focus away from other strategic activities” related to the transition.

When it comes to this problem, LMN is not alone. According to research published by Rob Cross, Reb Rebele, and Adam Grant in HBR, “up to a third of value-added collaborations [in any organization] come from only 3% to 5% of employees.” As a result, often the people who are most in demand (those with the answers) are becoming increasingly over-taxed by the burden of responding to requests for their expertise. The really scary thing is that in most organizations leadership doesn’t even know who their top collaborators are. As many as 50% of an organization’s top collaborators can’t even be identified by the organization.

Enter a Q+A program. Increasingly, we’re seeing more and more firms successfully implement formal Q+A programs inside Synthesis to identify and activate subject matter experts. We’ve learned from firms like LMN, brainstormed what this looks like at previous Synthesis Workshops, and shared some successful programs through our Office Hours webinar series. In this article we’re going to share the benefits of a Q+A program along with some of the roles and steps necessary to roll one out in your firm.

KA Connect – The time has come for a Knowledge Management Tribe in the AEC Industry.

August 23, 2009 Christopher Parsons

Last fall I called Doris Pulsifer after reading “A Case for Knowledge Management in the A/E Industry,” a viewpoint article which Doris wrote for the October, 2008 issue of AECBytes. In the article, Doris comprehensively outlined the state of Knowledge Management (KM) in our industry, addressed the definition and history of Knowledge Management, listed common techniques and systems for managing knowledge, and shared insights into her approach as the leader of the Knowledge Management Department at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, LLP. (You can read the article here.) Doris and I discussed the need for a Knowledge Management community in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) Industry and I agreed that I would look into the next steps of getting one started.

Over the years, I have had similar conversations with others who were equally interested in the idea of starting an AEC Knowledge Management community. We all agreed that while Knowledge Management tends to appear on the agendas of various AEC roundtables and conferences, we could all benefit from a community and/or conference exclusively dedicated to the advancement of the practice.