Knowledge Management - another job for the Quality Professional
On 20 January 2010, NucSIG held its first event of 2010 covering 'Knowledge Management.' The event was held at the Hamfields Leisure centre next to the former Berkeley Power Station. The event was hosted and organized by Magnox North and sponsored by Proquis. The Steering group would like to thank Richard Connett and Val Docherty from Magnox North for organizing the event and Bill Best from Proquis for sponsoring it.
We would also like to specifically thank Parsons Brinkerhoff who not only presented at the event but brought along a lot of free literature and publications generated by their KM system.
Although a flurry of snow the night before prevented a few from attending, we had 30 quality professionals at the event with some new NucSIG members and some regular attendees.
The event focused on knowledge management with presentations from a variety of speakers covering different aspects of this very diverse topic, a key theme being that knowledge management principles are a fundamental part of a QA professional’s toolkit. In his opening address, Geoff Edmondson, Chair NucSIG, emphasized the growing importance of knowledge management and the need to recognize that knowledge is an asset that should to be managed in the same way as other key organizational assets.
The event opened with a presentation on the decommissioning work at Berkeley presented by David Brown, outlining how knowledge management had assisted them and providing examples of knowledge management systems. The presentations included:
- Knowledge concepts and the value of knowledge management together with examples of knowledge management practices in a large engineering consultancy, presented by Alan Knott, Parsons Brinkerhoff
- A presentation from Larry Malthoff, Magnox North on WANO (World Association of Nuclear Operators) on sharing practical experience for improvement
- Emily Jones of Osbourne Clark presented on the legal aspects of managing and controlling information particularly those around the Data Protection Act
- Graham Litson, British Energy gave a presentation on their CDMS
- A review by Mike Underwood of Magnox North's proposals for knowledge management
The event stimulated some good debate and questions from the attendees and was well received. Mike Underwood, NucSIG Steering Group member commented: "It is always valuable to share understanding and experiences from outside your company and indeed outside your industry. I am leading a knowledge management improvement programme - we are pretty much on square one. At this event I have made a contact whose company has a similar policy but is four years further down the line. He has agreed that we can visit to pick their brains and learn what went well and what didn't. This is what networking is all about."
Presentations delivered at this event included:
Introduction to Event by Alan Knott, Parsons Brinkerhoff
Parsons Brinkerhoff Experience Sharepoint and KM by Alan Knott