Document & Knowledge Management in Civil Engineering Projects

The volume of documents, information, and knowledge accumulated throughout the lifecycle of a project is immense. With the transition to electronic correspondence (primarily email), even larger amounts of documents are being generated.

Additionally, due to the scale and complexity of projects, it is necessary to manage a large number of follow-ups to ensure compliance with contractual terms: tracking submissions and approvals, monitoring RFIs, ensuring milestone compliance, overseeing supplier approvals, tracking plan statuses, and more.

To facilitate efficient and seamless work, without separating documents from the knowledge (which is often managed in Excel spreadsheets), it is recommended to manage the project—both its documents and knowledge—using a dedicated system tailored to the project’s nature.

We have over 15 years of experience in the construction field, managing a wide variety of projects: roads, building construction, infrastructure, power plants (regular and pumped storage), railways, tunnelling, and more. Bazelet Consulting offers specialized Document and Knowledge Management services tailored for engineering projects. Recognizing the vast amount of information generated throughout a project’s lifecycle, especially with the prevalence of electronic communications, they emphasize the importance of efficient management systems.

How to manage your Knowledge Together with your Documents instead of in Parallel to them

Project Configuration and Process Management in Engineering Projects

Bazelet Consulting specializes in defining the configuration of projects, defining the required processes, setting them up and managing them.

The configuration of the project will include, among other things, the division into zones / segments, the division into engineering elements in the project space (bridge, building A), determining the disciplines used and other issues such as the stages and sub-stages of execution, handover, and more.

In every project in the field of civil engineering, in the construction of buildings as well as in infrastructure, there are a large number of parallel processes, some of which are tangential and many of which are influenced by each other.

Project management processes include ongoing correspondence, statutes, schedules, requests (RFI), submissions for approval such as suppliers and materials, management of changes/exceptions and more.

In many of the design-build projects (DB) and franchise projects (PPP), the processes are dictated from the contract itself and it is very important to define the processes so that they support management according to the contractual requirements – for example, the number of days allocated for the response (of the client or the contractor) or the status of a change request.

Defining work processes, including the use of dedicated systems as required, enables orderly management and contributes to maximizing project profits.

Implementing Project Configuration

It is recommended to integrate process management into the daily management of the project. This integration is done by analyzing the contractual requirements, analyzing the existing work processes in the project and/or organization, building a computerized infrastructure to support the selected processes and implementing the system and processes in the project and/or organization.

For example, managing the RFI process in a computerized system gives many advantages such as opening the RFI with relation to the relevant technical documents, managing the monitoring of the process through the system and receiving an up-to-date status at any time as well as saving on outgoing and incoming emails and producing status reports according to the various required views (according to discipline, status, element/structure in the project, responsible for the answer and so on).

In DB (Design Build) projects, a critical process is the validating the plans/drawings for construction, including the ongoing update and management of folders with the most up-to-date plans and enabling access from a variety of stationary and mobile devices.

Document and Knowledge Management

Evaluating Document and Knowledge Management Requirements

This stage is essential in the implementation of a quality documentation management system and includes, among others:

  • Mapping the organizational and contractual requirements – detailing the documents that must be handled (legal documents, engineering documents, commercial documents, etc.), the quantity of documents expected, the required submission/approval methodד and cost estimation analysis.
  • Conducting an examination of the existing work processes in the organization / project and analyzing the effect of these elements on the course of the day-to-day work
  • Analysing needs in the field considering the administrative needs and the nature of the organization or project.

We specialize in the various civil engineering of different sorts.

Implementation

  • Creation and implementation of new work processes and adaptation of existing processes to ensure efficient conduct and in accordance with requirements.
  • Characterization of the documentation management system and, if necessary, carrying out the process of locating the appropriate system for the company / project.
  • Establishing the Document and Knowledge management system in the organization / project according to the required characterization and configuration.
  • Conducting training and implementation of the document management system among the various project participants.
  • Accompanying the organization in the process of assimilation and representing it in front of the supplier of the documentation management system while verifying the compliance with the contract.
  • Creating adapted document templates for use by the organization in order to optimize the document approval process, their storage and location at any time
  • Consulting in the field of the documentation management department, which includes locating and training the personnel, accompanying the team in creating, registering, handling and filing the technical, legal and commercial documents and managing and monitoring the project correspondence, including creation an archiving of documents.
  • Writing suitable working documents (forms and procedures) and implementing them in the project.

Project Services

At Bazelet Consulting, we offer various project services:

  • Monitoring of the system including verification of preservation of essential documents (official documents, various correspondences, meeting summaries, etc.).
  • Management of the status of Submissions/RFIs – according to configuration – management of processes in the project, including status reports.
  • Producing various reports – updated plans/drawings, valid plans for constriction, system usage reports etc.

 

Project Management Support

In projects in the field of civil engineering, design management and design control are an integral part of the project and may have extensive economic implications on the conduct of the project. The ongoing, continuous and immediate handling saves time and resources and allows the design factors to move forward with the project while monitoring the progress of the design in detail.

During construction, it is of great importance to manage the plans approved for construction – including regular updates that are often common. We aspire to enable users to access folders that contain only the most updated programs, by area / section, by element (e.g. bridge) / floor, by discipline and more, according to the project needs.

At Bazelet Consulting, we offer management of a dedicated system through which we monitor the design approval process. The system should enable continuous monitoring with regard to:

  • Submissions/RFIs – status and schedule
  • Updated edition of a drawing including the previous versions of the drawing – all previous editions are to be available in a search according to the appropriate permissions.
  • The design control and document management system rely on correspondence, submissions, response documents and more. We collect the relevant documents during the current course of the project by various means such as a dedicated project mail, centralized saving and managing of documents and other methods.
  • Regular meetings and direct and continuous contact with the project team
  • Ongoing project support including various reports

Below are examples of reports

  • Updated drawings report – including documentation of all editions
  • Permit status report
  • Design approvals monitoring report – documents and submissions
  • Monitoring of tasks to be performed according to needs – both internal as well as external entities.

  • For more detailed information, you can visit their website: bazelet.com