A UK-based internationally operating construction company with an annual turnover of about 370 million GBP has three divisions (building work, civil engineering work, marine/water) and operates in four geographic regions. In the mid-90s the top management started a change project to improve the knowledge management of the company due to the insight that many severe problems within the organization stemmed from bad engineering. This initiative drew on the establishment of a new role, the so-called Regional Engineering Managers (REM). After several years, there were ten REMs in the company, two in each region and two in group companies. The REM had three main functions: 1. To contribute towards putting together tenders.

2. To value engineer tenders and ongoing projects.

3. To support the training and development of site engineers.

The REMs were expected to be the major conduit between the sites and the regions on one hand, and between the regions on the other hand. The new role was designed to enable learning between single sites and between projects in different regions. The REMs created a network among themselves. If one came across a good idea, he would put it on a report sheet and distribute this to his colleagues, and the other REMs, via email. Interestingly, they hardly used the internal register of expertise that the enterprise possessed, but instead relied heavily on their own personal networks within and outside of the organization. All REMs met every three months at 'engineering forums' to discuss a wide range of issues and to extend and

reinforce personal contacts and networks. They also organized biannual conferences for site engineers who would meet to discuss project successes and failures, new jobs, current issues, and so forth. REMs were not very much involved in formal project progress meetings, but in value engineering workshops, pre-and post-contract meetings, and to some extent in

project review meetings. The REMs had no line authority over engineers. Hence, they had to rely on their persuasive skills and build up good relations with the site engineers in order to gain access to their knowledge and convince the engineers to apply the new knowledge the REMs had promulgated. Given the diverse cultures and personalities on the various sites, the REMs had to be more than experienced engineers.

Question:

What are the key success factors of this knowledge management tool in order for it to work well?