April 2003 13EM

EM IT Insight

by Jill Barson Gilbert

Why did we select the permitting strategy weused when we built the cogeneration plant in1980? What about the Title V permits for ourplant—what was the rationale for submittingfive permit applications instead of one applica-tion for the whole site? Who was that stack sam-pling contractor that gave us such good servicea few years ago? What were our greenhouse gasemissions over the past five years? How muchnatural gas did our facilities consume? Whatwas the total volume of waste produced? Whatwas the net waste cost per site?

Insightful environment, health, andsafety (EH&S) information has becomeone of a company’s greatest assets.

Answering questions like those listed abovecan be painful even if the knowledge re-sides within your organization. It often re-quires involving several people andquerying several data sources, can take sev-eral hours or even days to research, andthen necessitates combining the answersinto something useful. What do you do ifthe information no longer resides in yourorganization, if the knowledge in yourEH&S staff’s heads literally walks out thedoor when someone retires or leaves thecompany? How do you manage EH&Sknowledge? The term knowledge manage-ment has been used loosely for several years.Is it just another fad—or worse, just the latest buzzword?This month’s column looks at knowledge management andthe technologies that can help turn your EH&S data intoinformation.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENTToday more than ever, we have data overload. According toInformation Builders, a supplier of technologies that help or-ganizations manage information (www.informationbuilders.com),“Most organizations use less than 10% of all the data theycollect and provide less than 5% of the people with access toit.” If you think about it, you have a lot of data rattling aroundin your head, your office, and your organization at any in-stant. I would wager that much of the “data” are not use-ful—they simply exist. So, how do you turn this amorphous

heap of data into useful information or business intelligence?Experts differ when it comes to a universal definition of

knowledge management, or what constitutes knowledge. TheIBM Institute for Business Value says that knowledge man-agement is the ability of an organization to create, share, anduse the collective knowledge of its products, processes, andpeople to increase workplace productivity and reduce activi-ties that “reinvent the wheel” (see “Challenges in ManagingOrganizational Knowledge,” by M. Fontaine and E. Lesser,IBM Institute for Business Value, 2002; www1.ibm.com/services/insights/ibv_knowledgemanagementchallenge.html). An article inCIO Magazine (see “The ABCs of Knowledge Management,”by M. Santosous and J. Surmacz, May 23, 2001; www.cio.com/research/knowledge/edit/knowledgemanagementabcs.html) laysout the basics of knowledge management: In the broadest

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EM IT Insight

14 April 2003EM

Asynchronous InteractionOnline discussions occurring independent of time or location.Examples of asynchronous interaction are Web-based bulletinboards and e-mail.

Bulletin BoardA name for Web-based online conferencing spaces. Bulletinboards are asynchronous tools and can be organized in linearor threaded formats.

ChatSame time (synchronous) Web-based text interaction. Typicallyfast moving, chat can be used for large “auditorium” events,smaller group work meetings, social interactions, or small one-on-one sessions. Some chat applications integrate voice as wellas text.

Chief Knowledge OfficerThe person responsible for organizing a company’s knowledgeand information and ensuring that the appropriate people haveaccess to it.

Communities of Practice (CoPs)Groups that emerge around a discipline or problem, for example,a work-related subject like PM10 or bioremediation. They have noagenda; the subject that engages them defines them.

Content Management SystemsSoftware suites designed to incorporate tools and processesfor document management.

Data MartA repository of data that serves a particular community ofknowledge workers. The data may come from an enterprise-wide database or a data warehouse.

Data MiningThe process of data selection, exploration, and building modelsusing vast data stores to uncover previously unknown patterns.

Data WarehouseA database that stores large amounts of historical business data.

Document ManagementThe computerized management of electronic and paper-baseddocuments. Systems generally include an optical scanner anda system to convert paper documents into an electronic form, adatabase to organize documents, and a search mechanism toquickly find specific documents.

F2FShorthand for “face-to-face,” meaning offline interaction.

Intellectual CapitalThe knowledge assets that a company owns, including informa-tion in company databases, as well as individual employees’knowledge.

Knowledge Management(a) Embodies organizational processes that seek the syner-

gistic combination of data and information processingcapacity of information technologies, and the creative andinnovative capacity of human beings.

(b) The practice of researching, collecting, and organizing anenterprise’s employees’ knowledge.

PortalSoftware that presents customized information and transactionsto end users through a Web browser. Unlike an Intranet orExtranet, which only help companies distribute information onthe Web, a portal also lets users run applications.

Virtual CommunityA virtual community (also called online community) is a communityof people sharing common interests, ideas, and feelings over theInternet or other collaborative networks.

Source: Glossary of Online Interaction, available at www.fullcirc.com/community/interactionterms.htm.

Knowledge-Based Buzzwords

context, it says, knowledge management is the process throughwhich organizations generate value from their intellectual andknowledge-based assets. Most often, generating value fromsuch assets involves sharing ideas among employees, depart-ments, and even with other companies in an effort to devisebest practices. This collaboration connects people to peopleinstead of people to information.

Neither of these definitions of knowledge managementmentions technology. While information technology (IT)often supports knowledge management, remember thatknowledge management is an ongoing process, not a tech-nology in and of itself.

KNOWLEDGE-BASED ASSETSIBM recognizes that knowledge management is being movedto the forefront of many corporate agendas. As firms seek to

build competitive advantage in increasingly competitive mar-kets, they are turning to a previously untapped resource: theiremployees’ knowledge, or knowledge-based assets. Knowl-edge-based assets in the environmental industry are as im-portant as knowledge-based assets in other business areas.Organizations must establish what EH&S information quali-fies as intellectual- and knowledge-based assets; it is not thesame for all companies and organizations. Generally speak-ing, intellectual- and knowledge-based assets fall into one oftwo categories: explicit or tacit. Explicit knowledge consistsof anything that can be documented, archived, and codi-fied, often with the help of IT. Tacit (implicit) knowledge isthe knowledge, experience, and expertise contained inpeople’s heads. The major obstacle for most organizations isdiscovering how to recognize, generate, share, and managethat knowledge.

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April 2003 15EM

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OFSHARING KNOWLEDGE?In the Information Age, a company’s intellectual assets—what’sin people’s heads—are often more valuable than its physical as-sets—plants, office buildings, and equipment. This informationmust be shared to yield the greatest benefits of this knowledge.However, experts admit that collaboration alone, without goodbusiness reasons, can be meaningless at best and harmful at worst.A company considering deploying an EH&S knowledge man-agement system should establish goals and expectations. Somebenefits are self-evident and can be measured in bottom-linesavings, but others are more difficult to measure, such as

• live, direct access to real-time information;• access to information from multiple platforms and data sources;• access to an unlimited number of users;• improved relationships with key stakeholders, including

the community, shareholders, employees, and regulatoryauthorities;

• more time to spend on forward-looking EH&S strategies;• shortened timeline to make better EH&S decisions

because of availability of information; and• expertise and experience shared through collaboration

capabilities.

TECHNOLOGIES TO SUPPORTKNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENTAny number of software and hardware tools can supportknowledge management, ranging from standard e-mailapplications to complex databases and data warehouses to col-laboration tools for online communities. The list below identi-fies some general categories of tools and technologies. Certaintools and technologies may fall into more than one category.

Knowledge repositories — Hardware includes data warehouses,data marts, and servers. Software includes a variety of EH&Smanagement information systems; document managementsystems like Xerox and Documentum; repositories of geographicinformation systems (GIS) data like those provided by TetraTech;and historical risk information like the Environmental DataResources Inc. database.

Expertise access tools — User interfaces that allow users toaccess databases with expert resumes, or audio/video/chathardware and software that support live online forums oron-demand data access.

E-learning applications — Software tools that help to manage

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EM IT Insight

16 April 2003EM

the entire training life cycle, from curriculum developmentand training materials development to deployment and de-livery through identification and documentation of who needstraining and/or who received which training on what dates(see also “Hop Aboard the e-Train” EM December 2001, p 12).

Discussion and chat technologies — Software and hardwarethat support e-mail systems such as Microsoft Outlook, IBMLotus Notes, and Eudora; collaborative software like IBM Lo-tus Sametime and IBM Lotus Quickplace; Internet-basedconferencing tools like Placeware, WebEx, and Centra thatallow distributed groups to “meet” together online at the sametime; instant messaging software like Microsoft Instant Mes-senger and AOL Instant Messenger; and electronic bulletinboards and discussion groups.

Synchronous interaction tools — Hardware and softwareoften used for online teaching, as well as interactive meet-ings. Synchronous interaction (also called “chatting”) requiresthat all participants be online at the same time and can in-clude audio and video. All of the chat technologies mentionedabove support synchronous interaction, except e-mail. Ex-amples of software that can be used to illustrate various types

of information during synchronous interaction includeQuicktime movie “stories” and other animation tools such asMacromedia Flash and Shockwave, in addition to MicrosoftPowerPoint and other presentation software.

Search and data mining tools — Examples of search enginesare Google, Yahoo!, Lycos, and MSN Search; examples of datamining tools are those provided by Cognos, IDC, InformationBuilders, KnowledgeSystems, and SAS.

Portals — Typically, Internet or Intranet-based user interfaces toa host of applications and data sources that may be housed indifferent systems. Good examples are regulatory agency Web pages(e.g., U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, www.epa.gov, and En-vironment Canada’s Green Lane, www.ec.gc.ca/envhome.html). Anumber of companies have public EH&S Web pages on the Internetand private EH&S Web pages on their Intranets. Various EH&Ssoftware firms offer portals that connect users to EH&S and otherinformation (e.g., Ecos Technologies, www.ecostech.com; Enviance,www.enviance.com; ESP, www.esp-net.com; ESS, www.environ.com; andInteGreyted Consultants, www.integreyted.com).

Knowledge management systems can assist your organiza-tion in gaining competitive advantage bymaking EH&S information available to alarger community. If you are considering aknowledge management system, be sure toalign all knowledge management effortswith your organization’s strategic objectives,and do not let the knowledge managementsystem become an entity unto itself. Re-member to address knowledge content, andunderstand how to tie knowledge manage-ment into an individual’s work activities.To borrow from Albert Einstein, “Everythingshould be made as simple as possible, butnot one bit simpler.”

About the AuthorJill Barson Gilbert, QEP, is director of EH&Smanagement information systems atInteGreyted Consultants, LLC. She helps or-ganizations increase business value by design-ing and implementing EH&S managementsolutions that leveragetechnology. A respectedauthor and speaker, Gilbertchairs A&WMA’s Informa-tion Solutions Committee.She can be reached atJGilbert@InteGreyted.com.

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