The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) government aims to reduce fiscal deficit by improving efficiency, reducing costs, as well as its subsidies. This often calls for the creation, use and exploitation of new knowledge. Therefore, knowledge assets must be properly managed to provide an environment for well-informed decisions. The aim of this chapter is to investigate the critical success factors (CSFs) for effective implementation of Knowledge Management (KM) strategies in the KSA public sector organisations. Semi-structured interviews with 42 public sector directors and managers were conducted. Nine key CSFs were revealed. The association between the identified factors is established by employing an interpretive structural modelling methodology. The Matrix of Cross-Impact Multiplications Applied to Classification analysis is carried out for identifying the factors having high influential power. The results indicated that 'leadership' and 'organisational culture' are the most significant critical success factors having highest driving power. The chapter concludes that leadership plays a key role in implementing KM strategies in the KSA. Leadership is about preparing organisation with a KM vision and values. The findings of this research provide valuable insight and guidance which will help the public sector decision makers to accomplish KM strategies effectively.

Implementing the strategies of Knowledge Management (KM) in the construction industry in Oman can produce significant benefits, such as continuous improvement and the improved performance of construction projects. In addition, the need to understand the determinants of successful Knowledge Management cannot be underestimated in organisations in the Middle East; specifically, those which are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The accelerated development in recent years regarding the GCC countries, highlights the need for these nations and their organisations to empower themselves through Knowledge Management. Nevertheless, very little empirical research has been conducted to understand this phenomenon. This paper investigates the role of Knowledge Management in relation to reducing the Cost of Poor Quality in the construction industry in Oman. Data was collected via questionnaires and interviews with Omani construction engineers from public and private sector. The findings reveal that knowledge capture and knowledge sharing are paramount to the contributory factors to the Cost of Poor Quality in practice, which includes the cost of errors and omissions, cost of design changes and the cost of poor skills. Index Terms-Knowledge management, cost of poor quality, Oman, construction sector.

No abstract

Technological innovations such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) offer opportunities to improve collaborative work and integration in the UK construction industry. The construction industry is one of the critical industries that operate in an information-rich environment, which relies heavily on knowledge as one of the strategic resources to ensure the tasks associated with the domain can be performed effectively and efficiently by the project team members. In order to take full advantages of both BIM and Knowledge Management (KM), there is a pressing need to integrate the two techniques for efficient construction projects delivery. However, very limited empirical research has been found in this area. Therefore, aim of this research is to investigate how UK construction organizations are managing knowledge in a BIM context. Qualitative case study approach was adopted to collect and analyze data. The results were derived from seven semi-structured interviews from a single project. This study revealed six key strategies that have been implemented for managing knowledge in a BIM context. They are: leadership support, improve access to knowledge assets, creating collaborative culture, hosting knowledge sharing events, capturing knowledge and creating information and communication technology infrastructure. The paper concludes that the UK infrastructure industry is heading in the right direction for implementing BIM however it is lacking knowledge management strategies. Therefore, managing knowledge in a BIM context is very critical. The leadership is most important critical success factor; leadership is about preparing organization with a Knowledge Management (KM) vision and values that resonate with the team, all employees, and key stakeholders. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop and deliver bespoke training programs to address, improve and measure the effectiveness of leadership skills for implementing KM strategies in a BIM context. Index Terms-Building information management, culture, managing knowledge, leadership, and implementation.