Knowledge Management in Organizations:

Bridging People, Enterprise Content and Business Processes

ATKINS Case Study

Manal Rayess (manal.rayess@gmail.com)

IT project in ATKINS: Towards a Knowledge-

based Work Atmosphere

Overview “We have aimed at making ATKINS a knowledge-

based and knowledge-ready organization by bringing
Country or Region: Dubai-UAE-ME
Industry: Constructions Engineering and knowledge at our users’ fingertips, streamlining
Consultancy processes and making work easier and more
Customer Profile
efficient”
Clare Bradley, Regional Systems Manager, ATKINS Middle East & India
Atkins is a multinational constructions
company that provides innovative solutions With more than 40 offices all over the continents, the UK-based
of leading architectural, engineering,
planning and consultancy projects. Atkins
constructions development and consultancy company, ATKINS,
ME & India now employs around 3000 used to depend on its Web site (aka the blue pages) to display
professionals to serve the constructions
market sectors in the region.
corporate-related news and information. However, this content was
mostly concentrated on the UK office and of less (or no) relevance
Business Needs
Regional project managers and senior
to other regional offices such as the UAE office. The case with
executives required better means to bridge organizing and sharing enterprise content was no better. Massive
people (within and across the different
regions) with information to acquire easy
redundant communication and navigation was the typical way of
access, people with people to share finding a piece of information or sharing knowledge especially
knowledge and people with business
processes to have better productivity.
among the geographically dispersed experts.

Solution
AXIS is developed as a new Web portal
To overcome these limitations and to dramatically improve the
based on Microsoft’s latest technology, organization and management of enterprise content, collaboration
SharePoint, as an efficient mean to mainly
manage enterprise content and facilitate
and sharing of knowledge, the company decided to launch a project
collaboration and the sharing of to build the right infrastructure. The newly developed portal for
knowledge. Other technologies are
employed to facilitate communication.
collaboration and content management now gives project
managers more comprehensive views of critical information, and
Benefits

Improved storage, organization and
allows better collaboration and easy access of data and sharing of
location of enterprise electronic content knowledge.

Enhanced business insight through
better reporting

Improved sharing of knowledge

Enhanced employee collaboration

Enhanced employee productivity

Ensured consistency of documents and
business process
Situation
In February, 2007, two instances of AXIS,
ATKIN’s new portal, were launched. One
instance is based in the UK and the other is
in the Middle East. The first noticeable
impact of the new solution is that the number
of web pages shrank from around 6000 to
300 pages.
Before that date, information was not easy to
find, not only because of the huge number of
web pages, but also because people used to
keep a local copy of the same document in
their local folders or in some network folder.
As a result, tens of replicas could be found
for the same document. The network driver
had hundreds of unstructured, poorly-labeled
folders with a folder for each employee. To
locate some application form, for example,
the most common and easiest way was to
call or send an email to some colleague and
ask whether she happened to keep a copy of
the form on her local drive or at least know
where it could be found in the local network
file server. Another common scenario that
shows how information used to be assembled
in an unstructured process is when a
multiregional manager wishes to have a
report showing the latest data and status
about ongoing projects categorized by region.
This could involve extra steps of collecting,
updating, consolidating data as well as
unifying the format as each replica of the
same file could have different format. This
would typically involve lot of
incoming/outgoing calls and emails.
Another facet of the inadequacy of the old
infrastructure was the difficulty of sharing
and exchanging knowledge, lessons learned,
discussions or experiences between the
engineers in different geographical regions.
Another weakness point in the old
infrastructure was that its design didn’t
consider the special user class of clients and
partners. No customized area was dedicated
for these stakeholders to connect virtually to
the firm to get information relevant to their
projects and needs.
The role of computers in managing projects
and teams during a project was limited to the
use of MS Outlook for exchanging emails and
the setting of meetings, and the use of the
network storage drivers for creating folders
for saving the projects data and the related
documents. The problems of redundant
content, un-unified format, and un-unified
storage structure, had lead to consequences
of inconsistent reporting, poor user
experience, and un-easy access and
gathering of data.
To meet these growing needs, ATKINS
needed a solution that would:

Support the growing amount and
complexity of enterprise content in terms of
data, information and knowledge at the
local and global levels.

Enhance both the scope and detail of
business insight for better visibility and
decision making through central, up-to-
date, and real-time copies of data.

Improve the ways in which information can
be viewed, accessed and utilized in a
timely manner.

Support the need for exchanging
knowledge through better means of
collaboration.

Streamline major business processes
through unified routines.
Solution
Recognizing the growing need for a new
solution, the top management decided to
launch a project for revamping the firm’s
online and network systems.
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 Microsoft SharePoint Server and Services
2007 (MOSS) was picked as the new firm’s
portal. SharePoint (SP) is a collection of
technologies ranging from a web browser to a
platform for different enterprise content and
process management. MS SharePoint is
geared to attend to the enterprise major
concerns of efficiently connecting people,
content (data, information, knowledge,
documents, etc) and processes with various
technologies to manage and serve each of
these vectors.
ATKINS distinguished three layers through
which it utilized the different technologies
provided by SP to design its portal, named
AXIS. These layers are: its web site, internal
sites and extranet for its clients and partners.
The SP web interface and accompanying web
controls were first utilized to provide better
user interface and experience through better
look and feel interface and filtered updated
content.
Second step was to design and develop the
collaboration space on the intranet level.
Figure 1: New Web page for Three areas were defined: Knowledge space,
knowledge exchange with Team space and Project space.
links to the 11 technical
networks
Building the Knowledge Exchange Space
In response to the emergent need of
facilitating and organizing knowledge
exchange among ATKINS engineers, the chief
executive in the main UK office defined
eleven knowledge areas and assigned a
‘Network Chair’ for each of the defined areas.
Knowledge (specialty) areas include (figure
1): Bridge Engineering, Carbon Critical
Buildings, Commercial Due Diligence,
Geospatial & Integrated Digital Solutions,
Geotechnical, Internal Project Management,
Master-planning, Strategy & Policy Planning,
Structural Engineering, Tall Buildings, and
Tunneling.
The ’Global Knowledge Exchange’ space
serves as a tunnel for the dispersed
knowledge to flow between professionals in
different locations. Professionals can share
presentations, open discussions or
ask/answer technical questions where 85%
of questions got answers in short time.
Another less-structured space for knowledge
sharing is the ‘Knowledge Site Index’ that
doesn’t follow a pre-defined structure. It
rather allows any professional to host a space
for displaying material for or discussing any
topic under some business area. To ensure
non-overlapped redundant content, an
application form should be submitted to
justify the need of the desired space and
specify one business owner and two site
owners who shall receive adequate training
on how to use SP web controls.
Building the Team Collaboration Space
Each department was allocated a space on
AXIS where it can employ the different
controls that come with SharePoint to display
its news and announcements, store its
documents and forms, assign blogs to its
staff, or automate some process.
Departments that provide service support to
other departments such as the IT, HR and
marketing departments were among the first
to migrate to AXIS. The move of such central
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Figure 2: Web page
for some
department in the
UAE office. The
page contains a
document library
and a list to place
the team holidays
departments to the shared portal solved the
problem faced previously by staff when they
wanted to browse some commonly-used
document or application form in the network
shared storage that used to contain hundreds
of folders. With the SharePoint portal, all
important documents are placed in a
document library (figure 2), which is an easy-
to-use, out of the box web part that comes
with SharePoint to serve as a list (or
container) with controls to add/edit/delete
documents. More than one document
libraries can be created to hold different
categories of documents. Site administrators
receive training on how to set access rights
on different levels. For example, one
document (or document library) can be
shared among everyone; another one can
have limited access.
Other SP out-of-the-box features that were
efficiently employed in AXIS team sites
include:
o Calendar. Team members can use
the team calendar to add, view and
get notified about upcoming
events, deadlines, and meetings
related to the team. This calendar-
based list can also be linked to the
Outlook calendar.
o Tasks. Teams can use this list to
keep track of the assignment,
status and completion of tasks that
are shared among team members.
o Issues. This list can be used to
manage and track the progress of
issues assigned to a person or a
team.
Automation of some common business
activities made possible with SharePoint’s
out of the box Workflow feature. This helps
boasting the business productivity. A
common example where workflows can be
employed is the document approval
process. In ATKINS, employees can now
apply for their annual leaves directly by
filling in the leave request application form,
which is placed in the HR document library,
and submit it online and it will be directed
automatically to the manager in charge.
The manager will receive an email
notification with options to approve or
reject the request. The requester receives
a notification whether his application had
been approved or rejected.
Other examples of process automation that
were developed by the IT department using
SP and MS-InfoPath technologies include:
New Joiner form, Book a Driver, and Order
Stationary forms (figure 6).
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 Figure 3: Project
management
controls
Figure 4: The “Commercial
Gate”, a tool for directing the
process of bidding projects
The new joiner form can be accessed from
AXIS to let the new starter picks his IT
requirements (hardware and software). Upon
submission, the form follows the designated
path to notify concerned people.
Building the Project Workspace
For each new project (identified by a unique
job#), a project workspace site can be
created using the already available (but
extensible) SP project workspace site
template.
Besides the default lists available for any new
site/page on SP (Announcements, Calendar,
Links, and Tasks), a project workspace site
includes the following specialized built-in lists
for team collaboration and project
management:
o Project Documents
o Project Issues
o Project Risks
o Project Deliverables
Project managers and top management can
easily track the progress of and efficiently
manage projects. To gain further insight on
business, ATKINS plugged another project
management tool on AXIS for advanced
reporting on and risk management of projects
(figure 3). Using this feature, central
management can drill-down through projects
by region, then by risk-level for example. It
can view actual vs. forecasted costs and
track the cash flow of each project.
Another specialized tool that the Systems
team purchased and plugged into the firm’s
SharePoint portal to direct the process of
bidding and delivering projects is what is
called in ATKINS the ‘Commercial Gate’
(figure 4). This control comprises an
interactive graphical diagram (similar to what
could be generated using MS Visio) that can
direct the process of bidding by
diagrammatically showing the required steps
and their status where each step can be
associated with the required documents to
be filled and submitted.
Enhanced infrastructure for
communication
Besides the efforts put by ATKINS’s systems
specialists in revamping the firm’s internet,
intranet and extranet portals, the firm had
also invested in other collaboration and
communication tools such as Microsoft Office
Communicator and CISCO IP Communicator
applications so that people can be accessible
whether at office, meetings or abroad.
Using MS office communicator, an employee
can instant-message any employee whether
in the same physical location or in different
overseas region. This can be ideal for short
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 notices, quick questions, or availability
checking.
Cisco IP Communicator is Windows PC-based
softphone that can be used for voice and
video calls through the PC (figure 5). This
allows employees to access their corporate
phone number and voicemail, take or make
calls from anywhere provided they have
access to a PC with an Internet connection
(since they can remotely access the
corporate network through AXIS).
Benefits
Revamping the ATKIN’s intranet, extranet and
internet infrastructure and adopting new
technologies for efficiently connecting people
with people, data, knowledge and business
processes provided great benefits to the
firm’s business productivity and to the way
people do their work. Some of these benefits
Figure 5: Softphone that is
are listed below.
reached through the Web Portal
to make receive calls

Improved storage, organization and
location of enterprise electronic content

Enhanced business insight through better
reporting

Improved sharing of knowledge

Enhanced employee collaboration

Enhanced employee productivity

Ensured consistency of documents and
business processes
Improved storage, organization and
location of enterprise electronic content
Despite the many types of content, such as
documents emails, worksheets, and web
pages, that keeps getting larger and larger on
daily basis due to the ease of its creation,
ATKINS’ SharePoint-based portal had
succeeded in providing a unified, well-
organized, and easy to manage structure for
documents, records, and web content. This is
best manifested in the considerable
reduction of web pages from 6000 to only
300 pages. The network file server is no
longer used to store documents in a non-
structured manner. Document libraries can
be created on the web portal to store central
copies of documents.
Enhanced business insight through
better reporting
Aggregation and consolidation of data was no
trivial job four years back in ATKINS. This was
due to the existence of multiple versions of
the same data file that could be found in
multiple locations saved by different
employees. The new portal provided central
data storage location through dedicated
document and report libraries (SharePoint’
out of the box lists that can be added to the
web page to manage documents and
developed data reports).
Special dashboards (also known as multi-
report summary pages) were developed to
provide a unified but flexible view of data
pertinent to all projects run by ATKINS.
Project management controls are used for
advanced statistical reporting on projects.
Improved sharing of knowledge
The new portal hosts multiple channels
through which the valuable yet intangible
corporate asset of knowledge can be
dispatched for better acquisition and sharing.
This is manifested in the classification of
ATKINS knowledge areas into 11 classes and
organizing them into 11 technical networks. A
special site is created for each area where
specialists can meet, document, acquire and
exchange their knowledge. They can ask and
answer technical questions, post material
and articles and access technical resources
such as online libraries.
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Figure 6: The New Starter
form that can be accessed
and submitted online. It has
an embedded workflow to
move it through the
designated path to get the
required approvals and notify
the concerned staff
Figure 7: An example of a
Workflow design
Enhanced employee collaboration
With the new technology solutions, an
employee can instant message any other
employee whether in the same regional office
or in other offices. Employees can make and
receive phone calls as if incoming to or
outgoing from their office phone line from
anywhere and at any time. Team members
can share news, announcements and event
calendar.
Enhanced employee productivity
This was realized by three means: gathering
data through browser-based forms that are
deployed to the SharePoint portal,
streamlining business processes by using
workflows that are predefined in SharePoint
portal, and greater integration with MS Office
system desktop programs.
Office SharePoint Server defines a workflow
as a process that automatically moves
documents or items through a sequence of
actions or tasks that are related to a
business process (figure 7). Workflows are
typically used for coordinating common
business processes that may involve more
than one party at different hierarchical levels,
such as project approval or document review.
By automating the human tasks involved with
those processes, the management and
tracking of these tasks become easier and
more efficient.
Employees can start and interact with
workflows directly in some 2007 Office
programs such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint
and Outlook. For example, an employee can
get an alert through his Outlook whenever he
got assigned some task to do (reviewing or
approving a document for example).
Ensured consistency of documents and
business processes
This was realized by the use of shared
document libraries to hold documents, and
the use of workflows to streamline and direct
business processes.
Discussion
The growing need for more context-
dependent representation of facts, in such a
way that guarantees better understanding of
the context, had caused the trend-line to go
from the need of merely managing and
processing data, as raw numbers or bits, to
the need of managing information, relations
within data), to the recently emergent need of
managing knowledge, patterns (justified
beliefs about relationships) within
Information, (figure 8). An example of this
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Figure 8: Data, Information
and Knowledge in terms of
context-dependence and
understanding
Figure 9: The processes
required for bridging people,
data and business
evolution can be felt in organizations when
some marketing manager initially asks for the
email address of some customer. The ‘Data
Worker’ can revert to an Excel sheet where all
customer details are kept to get the
requested data. In this case the DW is
retrieving data, i.e. raw facts. In a later
scenario the same manager would require
the details of top buyers and top products. In
this case the ‘Information Work’ would revert
to some database that relates the tables of
‘Customers’ and ‘Products’ in a ‘purchase’
relationship (an Access or SQL database for
example) to retrieve the details of the
customers whose purchasing orders have the
highest totals. In this particular scenario, the
business unit needed an Information system
to process relationships in the context of the
firm’s business (a database management
system). In a higher-level scenario, the same
marketing manager can ask something like
‘get me the prospect customers who might be
interested in our new product’. In this case it
is not a trivial query as it requires deeper
understanding of the context so that existing
knowledge can be analyzed for new
knowledge to be created. The answer would
affect the decision and determine the action
to be taken by the management. The
professional expert (Knowledge Worker)
needs to figure out the patterns within the
profiles of the customers who were previously
interested in products similar to the new
product. The expert could have an intuition or
insight about the answer (tacit knowledge) or
can revert to some documented knowledge
(explicit knowledge). In both ways, this query
requires that the right systems, technologies
and infrastructure necessary to discover,
capture, share and apply such knowledge are
in place. It also involves the people, as
another source of knowledge besides the
earlier sources of data and Information. In
that particular scenario, the human factor
(the domain expert) can be involved in the
acquisition and justified understanding of the
customer profile and the patterns that can be
deduced from the relationship between the
customer profile and the product catalogue.
Whereas in the previous two cases using the
right applications to store and organize the
data and Information would guarantee the
retrieval of the desired answer.
Knowledge management in organizations can
be seen as the systematic processes by
which the knowledge which is needed for the
success of the organization is discovered,
captured, shared, and applied. This requires
the right infrastructure, mechanisms,
systems and processes to bridge all of the
three enterprise pillars and sources of
knowledge: enterprise content (data,
information, and knowledge), people and
business processes (figure 9). This shall set
the right infrastructure required for
knowledge to exist, accumulate and flow
smoothly in the enterprise.
To bridge people with people, tools for
facilitating the collaboration are required. To
bridge people with enterprise content, tools
for facilitating enterprise content
management (ECM) are required. To bridge
people with business processes, tools for
enhancing business productivity are required.
To bridge enterprise content with business
processes, tools for realizing business
intelligence are required.
The major technology that ATKINS employed
to fulfill this objective of providing the right
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 infrastructure for knowledge management is
Microsoft’s SharePoint server and services
(figure 10).
Figure 10: SharePoint feature
With its features specifically catered to attend
areas
to the enterprise needs of bridging people,
content and business processes, the first
fruits of deploying SharePoint-based web
portal in ATKINS (called AXIS) were evident.
The new solution succeeded in bridging
people in all of the firm’s 40+ worldwide
offices through better collaboration and
knowledge sharing facilities, bridging people
with enterprise content through better
infrastructure for its content management via
its new SharePoint-based portal, bridging
people with business processes through
enhancing the business productivity via the
use of automated workflows and web-based
forms, and bridging enterprise content with
business processes through the employment
of business intelligence and reporting tools
and dashboards.
ATKINS launched its ‘knowledge and
enterprise content management’ project in
the first quarter of the year 2007 with a
scope spanning around its business specialty
areas and including all employees of its
business domain units (engineers and
consultants) as well as business support
units (HR, marketing, sales). The project was
kicked off by the central management
identifying the main technical knowledge
areas (11 areas were identified) and
assigning an expert lead for each area. The
project advanced through different stages
from the initial stage of identifying the gaps in
the current settings and establishing the
specifications of the required solution, to the
stage of research where different potential
solutions and technologies were assessed
and evaluated, and then came the stages of
implementation, testing, user training and
post-implementation support.
The applied solution especially benefited the
sharing and exchanging of knowledge among
the firm’s experts through dedicated sites on
the web portal (discussion boards). This has
also enabled the discovery of both tacit and
explicit knowledge. New explicit knowledge
and content can be created through
combining the already posted material
whether they were articles, questions,
answers posted by experts, available
templates, or tools for mining the data
through advanced reporting. Discovery of
tacit knowledge was facilitated by the
socialization and collaboration tools such as
the instant messaging application that
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 connects all the firm’s employees in all its systems manager for the ME & India at
regional offices. ATKINS.

On another dimension, the application of To what extent has ATKINS succeeded in

some specific knowledge, such as managing,
evaluating and bidding projects, has been
directed by the use of workflows that allow
the automation of moving items or tasks
through predefined actions or steps in a way
that assembles automated routines or
directions, where a step can be combined
with some template to use or form to fill.
Evaluation
“We have aimed at making ATKINS a
knowledge-based and knowledge-ready
organization by bringing knowledge at our
users’ fingertips, streamlining processes and
making work easier and more efficient”
concluded Clare Bradley, the regional
creating a “knowledge-based environment”,
i.e. an environment where prior knowledge
can be easily and efficiently retrieved and
new knowledge can be created and stored for
the sake of leveraging business decisions
and insights?
To answer this question, we first need to
distinguish the main processes required for
retrieving and adding knowledge to and from
the enterprise business-related knowledge
sources, i.e. people, enterprise content and
business processes. Figure 11 illustrates
these processes (a-j).
We, then, can assess the availability of
different tools and technologies at ATKNIS
that are required to fulfill these processes
and the extent to which these tools are

Figure 11:
11:
Processes
required for
retrieving prior
knowledge from
and adding new
knowledge to the
enterprise
business-related
knowledge
sources (people,
enterprise
content and
business
processes)

10

Table 1:
1: Evaluation of availability
and level of utilization of
technology tools required for the
different processes of knowledge
management
The Information about the ATKINS project
studied in this case study was collected via
an interview meeting with Mrs. Clare
Bradley, Regional Systems Manager for ME
& India regions in ATKINS
(clare.bradley@atkinsglobal.com) by Manal
Rayess (manal.rayess@gmail.com) . The
meeting took place at the ATKINS office in
Dubai (Bur-Dubai), on 6th November 2009.
Mrs. Bradley reviewed and verified the
contents relevena to ATKINS presented in
this document.
actually utilized by the firm. Table 1
demonstrates these details.
As evident in table 1, although the utilization
of technology tools for supporting processes
of knowledge management is not fully
realized at the present time in ATKINS, but it
also shows that the firm actually acquires a
strong infrastructure and efficient technology
solutions and tools that would enable it to
realize its aimed-for potential as a
knowledge-based working environment.
Conclusion
This case study sheds a light on how ATKINS,
a global constructions firm, approached the
objective of establishing a knowledge-based
working atmosphere in such a away that
knowledge can be easily created, discovered,
shared, applied and stored. We described
the technology solution implemented by
ATKINS and showed how the project
launched by the firm for establishing an
infrastructure for knowledge management
benefitted the firm’s business and its two
valuables assets of people and knowledge.
This case study also discusses the applied
solution in the light of theoretical literature on
knowledge management and concludes that
the firm has successfully established an
infrastructure rich enough to support the
processes required for managing the
enterprise knowledge in ways that would
leverage the business insights and decisions.
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