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Sustainability Knowledge Management

Corey Squire

LEEDuser Basic Member

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January 29, 2018

Hi All,

As I mentioned at the summit, I'd like to start a discussion thread on knowledge management, company Intranets, and limiting Information overload as it pertains to sustainability. Those who are interested can share thoughts and experiences via this thread and maybe we'll set up an occasional phone call.

Here are the goals that I'm proposing:

What sustainability Information is essential for a typical design team?
What information should be ignored?
How should essential information be organized?
How should essential information be accessed?
what is working / not working with company intranets?
What information needs to be formally taught (sustainability literacy)?
How do we capture individual expertise and make it widely available?

Feel free to take a stab at the questions, share Intranet stories, or any other resources. I'll follow up with my Intranet site map which is my best attempt at listing and cataloging all essential information.

Go Knowledge Management!

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Sara Hickman

Sustainability Director

Retail Design Collaborative + Studio One Eleven

LEEDuser Basic Member

1 thumbs up

Mon, 01/29/2018 - 18:34

I love this idea Corey, and will set aside some time to jot down some ideas this week. Perhaps we could enter ideas in a google doc?

Nicolle VanWie

LEEDuser Basic Member

0 thumbs up

Mon, 01/29/2018 - 22:18

I would also love to continue this discussion. Thanks for starting it. We currently use Jive as our intranet and I, along with a few others, post relevant sustainability information in our 'Green Place', but things don't get looked at very often, much less read. Most everything also lives on our server, unfortunately duplicated. A few have told me they read what I post, so I guess some is better than none!

Nadav Malin

CEO

Green Commons, LLC

LEEDuser Expert

586 thumbs up

Mon, 01/29/2018 - 22:39

This is also a topic close to my heart! After struggling with it for a while, I stumbled across this blog from the UK, which makes a pretty good case that direct interaction is essential to effective knowledge sharing. If you like this post, check out the many others that address other dimensions of the challenge.

Meghan Lewis

Mithun

LEEDuser Basic Member

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Tue, 01/30/2018 - 01:11

I'm also really interested in this topic! We're making changes to our own Intranet currently, and are dealing with decisions involving how to set up the searchability and what resources should be located where. Please let me know if you set up a call/google doc!

Nancy Malone

Principal

Siegel & Strain Architects

LEEDuser Basic Member

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Tue, 01/30/2018 - 01:24

I, too, am very interested in this topic. Would also like to hear anyone's take on what needs to be taught formally or face-to-face [thank you, Nadav, for the link earlier]. I am also curious to know how much any of you see 'curiosity' and 'passion' fitting into it; in other words, do you see individuals searching out conferences, lectures or CE courses, or reading books on their own time [obviously, these cases would not be the norm, but do any of you see it at all]? Or is everyone expecting their knowledge vessel to be filled by the firm?

Gwen Fuertes

Associate

LMS Architects

LEEDuser Basic Member

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Tue, 01/30/2018 - 01:52

Thanks Corey. Would love to be involved as well. Can't say I have a ton of fresh ideas to share, though I have sort of 'hacked' into our existing knowledge sharing resources, by starting with the following - - We have started using "Pinnacle"/Microdesk as a tool for general Revit guidance office-wide (not exclusively sustainability-oriented) - but we have also authored our own internal "cheat sheets" that everyone can create and edit, and we put various tips and guides in there. We've made a running document for Insight daylighting that I'm happy to see many people in the office are contributing to - a live document, and you can also link to files on our server from the interface. HOWEVER I'm not convinced that the software/interface is the most successful, since most people tend to close it out and keep their taskbars clean (does anyone else use this service?). So I'd like to hear from others about what works ... maybe the Intranet concept works better, because it's more ubiquitous? - "Baking in" defaults whenever possible - so teams don't have to waste time setting up materials or looking up tables from scratch. E.g., we now have default firm's Revit materials have roughly correct reflectances and visual transmittance values to work with for doing Insight daylight analysis, and in Sefaira we created a template for multifamily projects with the default Title 24 envelope values - people match that template to their model. A little bit of a clunky workflow, but better than nothing. (borrowing from Corey's metaphor, start with Solarban 70 assumption and keeping it simple...) - We started a Sustainability Slack channel but since we don't pay for a Slack account, we don't have access to older conversations or posts. Its informality is something I like, but it's not useful if we can't use it as a true knowledge resource... Thanks everyone for a great meeting in Austin - so great to see and meet you all!

GBD Architects

GBD Architects

LEEDuser Premium Member

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Tue, 01/30/2018 - 02:13

Hope it's cool to share this, Corey; not sure where it came from. Did you develop it? Great to see the breadth of knowledge management options.

David Winans

Principal

GGLO

LEEDuser Basic Member

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Tue, 01/30/2018 - 02:21

I would like to be involved in this topic. GGLO has had a Sharepoint intranet site for approx 10 years and the sustainability page has become a bit cluttered. Luckily it is pretty easy to find info using the search box. We have also experienced limited usage, but are hopeful that a refresh planned for this year will bring more traffic. Would love to hear what others are doing.

David Williamson

HKS

LEEDuser Basic Member

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Tue, 01/30/2018 - 12:53

Corey, Thanks for getting this started. I would like to engage on this topic as well. Our Knowledge Management team and I are developing an internal design thinking resource currently using SharePoint. We've drawn some inspiration from this site developed by IDEO: http://www.designkit.org/ The content in the link above is intended for non-profits and I confirmed through a friend at IDEO that they are restricting use of the material. It is not for commercial use. However, I think the organization of information is well done so it provides a useful example. In particular, as you drill into the "methods" tab, regarding your question of how information should be organized . You can see here that the material is organized and reorganized around both phase, "Inspiration, Ideation, Implementation" and by questions like "How do I get started?". These questions that are interspersed among the content, refocus the content, picking out a few components related to the question. This enables the content to address the user where they are, rather than having to wade through all of the content to pick out what is relevant. I'm looking forward to continuing the discussion... David

Elizabeth Galloway

Senior Building Scientist

Payette

LEEDuser Basic Member

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Tue, 01/30/2018 - 13:38

Hannah, I believe the Knowledge Management Periodic table came from the folks at Knowledge Architecture. We use their product, Synthesis, for our internal company intranet. While it's intent is to share information and resources overall among the firm, we do have a Sustainability page with resources for everyone.

Mark Kelly

Associate Principal, Director of Sustainability

BAR Architects

LEEDuser Premium Member

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Tue, 01/30/2018 - 15:42

Great conversation already. Thanks All and thanks Corey for getting it started. I would like to be involved as well. We currently use KA’s intranet and have a sustainability section with resource links and the history of previous conversations. However, it is definitely underutilized and those that do participate tend to be a small group. We’re looking to improve on the effectiveness of the sharing, so great timing for the conversation. Thanks!

Don Jones

Principal, Director of Sustainable Design

EwingCole

LEEDuser Basic Member

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Tue, 01/30/2018 - 22:08

Hi All: That piped in Indian music is still running through my head, and all I could think of was the movie Help! but that's beside the point... We have an intranet (not sure of the platform), which is used for everything: project management, time reporting, expenses, benefits, etc. There are links to specs, reports, presentations, education programs and more. We have a sustainability section where all of our stuff lives - reference and study guides, slideshows, and other information like project lists and staff credentials. Like some of you have shared, ours needs a thorough cleaning and reorganization. The site also needs a good search function. It's on my list for this year to tackle those tasks. More info to follow.

Corey Squire

LEEDuser Basic Member

0 thumbs up

Fri, 02/02/2018 - 00:45

Hi All, I'm excited about all the interest in this topic. Sara suggested a Google Doc to share and edit ideas and I have created a Drive folder for us to use, linked below. Like many of you Lake Flato uses Synthesis by KA for our intranet. I've done only a brief survey of available platforms for information sharing and Synthesis seems to include all the functionality necessary for successful knowledge management. The challenge, which I think we could tackle as a group, is twofold: How do we load the platform with useful information and how do encourage designers to access it? I think these problems might be one in the same. If we create an intranet filled with easy-to-access, valuable information (useful), people will use it. When we first launched our Intranet last year, I took a stab at this and populated our intranet sustainability pages with all the information I thought would be relevant to design teams. I've included my intranet "site map" in the drive folder, along with another document with the questions that I posed in the first post. Feel free to contribution to them both. Once we solve this problem, we can stop managing knowledge and start learning again! https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GsfiKPiPlPwQIzOqLyuvmLwgZNfjWFaQ?usp=sharing A few more thought:
-Hannah posted the KA "Periodic Table of Knowledge Management". I recommend reviewing it, I've found it a super helpful framework. We send someone to their "KA Connect" conference last year and I was blown away by how deep this concept goes.
-Gwen mentioned using Slack at her firm. Does anyone else use Slack or other internal communication platforms and find them useful? I wonder if this is a compliment to or an alternative to an intranet?
-Nancy mentioned people seeking out knowledge themselves rather than having to be fed. My own experience is that on the first day of my first Job (as Z Smith's researcher, in case you know him), I had a mini nervous breakdown over how little I knew. My solution was to go home and read MEEB cover to cover over the next month or so. I think many newer architects worry that they don't know enough, but their reactions to that might be different. My thought is that curiosity and passion are functions of time. If you're working 60 hours a week, there's no time for curiosity. If 10 of those hours are spent searching and retrieving reference information, Knowledge Management has the power to give back that time and reignite passion! I know its more complicated than this (but maybe not too far from the truth).

Nadav Malin

CEO

Green Commons, LLC

LEEDuser Expert

586 thumbs up

Thu, 02/08/2018 - 10:42

Wow--thanks for setting up that Google Drive folder for sharing resources on this, Corey, and for sharing your Intranet Site Map and Discussion Question list. I've also attached here your slides from the great 5-minute presentation that kicked this topic off. I missed sharing those out earlier, but I think they're even more useful in context here. Also, seeing your Intranet Mind Map I was struck by how similar your topic structure is to the way we organize content on BuildingGreen.com. Here's a mind map diagram of that structure.

Nancy Malone

Principal

Siegel & Strain Architects

LEEDuser Basic Member

0 thumbs up

Thu, 02/08/2018 - 17:24

HI everyone, I wanted to share that earlier this week our office had a firm-wide [remember, 20 of us] mini-charrette to determine what we wanted to focus on in 2018 in terms of going deeper into sustainability. We did this by having everyone write down their top 3 priorities for what the firm should focus on and improve, then sorted the priorities into categories [classic post-it exercise]. There were several priorities that emerged but the top priority by a factor of three [3] was not a particular knowledge area, rather it was to improve how we manage & share information. How timely! Thank you all for your thoughts so far. Nancy

Allison Wilson

Sustainability Director

Ayers Saint Gross

LEEDuser Basic Member

5 thumbs up

Mon, 02/19/2018 - 20:29

Better late than never. To add to the list of knowledge management questions that I don’t know if we have good answers to, but maybe you do, how are you managing version control? Much of the work we do in sustainability has a shelf life and while information I post may be up-to-date or valid to share for a time, it inevitably becomes out-of-date and a resource I no longer want folks referencing. Through our intranet site we can do document check-in/check-out for individual pieces of information I want to share (so long as it’s in a Microsoft format), but that’s not always as visually appealing as the stuff we’d like to make available. Has anyone found a good way to share, share again, and then remove content from circulation that’s no longer relevant? Aley Allison Wilson From: Cor

Harry Flamm

Senior Sustainability Consultant

Stantec Architecture

LEEDuser Premium Member

20 thumbs up

Fri, 06/08/2018 - 14:37

Corey, and all others: It is never too late to read good stuff. Thanks very much for pulling this together. It is very useful for how we think about the dissemination of knowledge in our office, and in our life. Harry