Development of a Method to Retain Experiential Knowledge in Capital Projects Organizations

Abstract

As many professionals near the traditional retirement age, organizations are finding themselves facing a potential mass exodus of their most senior and experienced employees. These potential retirees have a knowledge inventory accrued through a career of successes and failures in their fields. This knowledge base is often the foundation of decisions that enhance operational efficiency, foster innovation, reduce the occurrence of critical errors, and enable corporate growth strategies. This paper addresses the increased rate of knowledge loss in the capital projects industry. The authors conducted case studies, interviews, and surveys to frame the problem and understand what constitutes a successful experiential knowledge-retention program in capital projects organizations. The result is an experiential knowledge-retention management model that aids in the implementation of a corporate knowledge-retention program, assesses current risk of experiential-knowledge loss across organizational knowledge areas, identifies at-risk individuals whose departure would result in the loss of considerable experiential knowledge, provides a mechanism for effectively planning to transfer the knowledge at risk, and offers guidelines for implementing the plan.