CDM Smith CDM Smith, Inc. Knowledge Management Case Study CDM Smith was founded as a partnership in 1947 by Thomas R. Camp, Herman G. Dresser, and Jack E. McKee. In its early years and throughout the 1950s, the partnership established its reputation in New England as an engineering practice specializing in water supply and water pollution control. Many early clients in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts remain CDM clients today. In the 1960s, CDM expanded globally and in 1970 moved from a partnership to a corporate governance model. During the 1980s, while continuing to build on its traditional base of water and wastewater expertise, CDM made an entry into the hazardous waste management field as a program manager for one of the EPA's first major Superfund contracts. To meet the unique service and contracting requirements of work in the federal sector, CDM established a wholly owned subsidiary, CDM Federal Programs Corporation, in 1986. These developments were followed in the early 1990's by a move from delivering consulting services into more extensive design-build, construction, and general contracting projects. At the same time, the firm expanded its capabilities in transportation, operations, information management, and geotechnical services. Today, CDM is a consulting engineering, construction, and operations firm providing exceptional service to public and private clients worldwide. The firm has about 4,500 employees across 100+ offices globally, and annual revenues of more than $1 billion. As a professional services firm, CDM is an intense user of information systems and related technologies but even more so, the firm prides itself on hiring and retaining the best and the brightest scientists and engineers in the field of environmental engineering. Each year CDM executes from 4-6,000 projects for its clients - some costing $10,000's and lasting but a few weeks, other worth $100's of millions and running over several years or even several decades. The motto for CDM is "listen think. deliver." It is paramount to CDM's success as a consulting/engineering firm that it . . identify best practices in the execution of projects leverage Its engineering knowledge across its global portfolio of engineering projects continue to refine, clarify, and validate its technical knowledge establish discrete project teams for each new client assignment that bring to bear the most appropriate expertise from across the firm mentor incoming Junior engineers monitor all projects to moderate project risk and achieve the most positive outcomes in terms of the quality, timeliness, and cost-effectiveness of client deliverables Initially, CDM's knowledge management practices were not particularly formalized. New hires received orientation training and were assigned to local mentors in their assigned office. A rporate library housed CDM publications on technical subjects and each field office maintained a library of what they deemed best practice client deliverables le.. reports, studies, drawings and the like). This approach worked well enough when the company was small and most employees knew one another. But as the firm grew in the late 1980's and 1990's, this informal literally an e-mail CDM Smith CDM Smith, Inc. Knowledge Management Case Study with an engineering or scientific question address to the entire firm requesting input. For years, Dispatcher served as the firm's primary knowledge-sharing platform. In more recent years, the firm has institutionalized communities of practice, creating about two dozen so-called "Technical Disciplines." Each Technical Discipline focuses on a body of knowledge (e.g. waste water management, soil reclamation, geophysics, drinking water management, and so forth) and maintains its own Intranet e-business portal of explicit knowledge complete with a library of specific management, trade and technical content, as well as guidelines, frameworks, case studies, templates, and examples of best practice. All content available from the knowledge portal is vetted by so-called "technical experts," who are senior members of their respective Technical Discipline communities. These portals also facilitate the sharing of tacit knowledge through discussion forums, meeting and conference event notices, Technical Discipline e-mail distribution, and an easily searchable directory of contact information on subject matter experts. As such these portals facilitate the distribution of the firm's explicit knowledge pertaining to a given subject area and also enabled the exchange of knowledge by electronically connecting those who need guidance with the appropriate lead practitioner. More recently, the firm has increased its attention to externally-facing social media platforms to promote and share its engineering and project management thought leadership on a variety of sustainability topics. The challenge they faced, according to Daryl Shepard, CDM/Smith Communications Specialist, was to leverage the expertise of thought leaders who were not very tech-savvy. Disseminating knowledge on social media platforms provides large-scale exposure, but also exposes the firm to potential reputation risk due to inadvertent posts, or opinions being relied upon like professional recommendations. As a result, policy guidance was disseminated to increase use of social media platforms, but in a manner that was (hopefully) not going to damage the firm's reputation. For example, guidelines Included details for addressing potential conflicts of interest, the importance of self-editing to avoid errors, corporate ownership of social media accounts and posts, and writing about what you know to "be interesting, stay out of trouble, and have fun. Case Study Questions 1. Based on the way that explicit and tacit knowledge is managed at CDM Smith, how and why would you expect it to; a.) impact the quality of what the firm produces for its clients and b.) moderate the risk associated with taking on large, complex projects? 2. Is there anything more that you can think of that CDM Smith could do to further improve knowledge management at the firm beyond what is described within the case study CDM Smith CDM Smith, Inc. Knowledge Management Case Study CDM Smith was founded as a partnership in 1947 by Thomas R. Camp, Herman G. Dresser, and Jack E. McKee. In its early years and throughout the 1950s, the partnership established its reputation in New England as an engineering practice specializing in water supply and water pollution control. Many early clients in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts remain CDM clients today. In the 1960s, CDM expanded globally and in 1970 moved from a partnership to a corporate governance model. During the 1980s, while continuing to build on its traditional base of water and wastewater expertise, CDM made an entry into the hazardous waste management field as a program manager for one of the EPA's first major Superfund contracts. To meet the unique service and contracting requirements of work in the federal sector, CDM established a wholly owned subsidiary, CDM Federal Programs Corporation, in 1986. These developments were followed in the early 1990's by a move from delivering consulting services into more extensive design-build, construction, and general contracting projects. At the same time, the firm expanded its capabilities in transportation, operations, information management, and geotechnical services. Today, CDM is a consulting engineering, construction, and operations firm providing exceptional service to public and private clients worldwide. The firm has about 4,500 employees across 100+ offices globally, and annual revenues of more than $1 billion. As a professional services firm, CDM is an intense user of information systems and related technologies but even more so, the firm prides itself on hiring and retaining the best and the brightest scientists and engineers in the field of environmental engineering. Each year CDM executes from 4-6,000 projects for its clients - some costing $10,000's and lasting but a few weeks, other worth $100's of millions and running over several years or even several decades. The motto for CDM is "listen think. deliver." It is paramount to CDM's success as a consulting/engineering firm that it . . identify best practices in the execution of projects leverage Its engineering knowledge across its global portfolio of engineering projects continue to refine, clarify, and validate its technical knowledge establish discrete project teams for each new client assignment that bring to bear the most appropriate expertise from across the firm mentor incoming Junior engineers monitor all projects to moderate project risk and achieve the most positive outcomes in terms of the quality, timeliness, and cost-effectiveness of client deliverables Initially, CDM's knowledge management practices were not particularly formalized. New hires received orientation training and were assigned to local mentors in their assigned office. A rporate library housed CDM publications on technical subjects and each field office maintained a library of what they deemed best practice client deliverables le.. reports, studies, drawings and the like). This approach worked well enough when the company was small and most employees knew one another. But as the firm grew in the late 1980's and 1990's, this informal literally an e-mail CDM Smith CDM Smith, Inc. Knowledge Management Case Study with an engineering or scientific question address to the entire firm requesting input. For years, Dispatcher served as the firm's primary knowledge-sharing platform. In more recent years, the firm has institutionalized communities of practice, creating about two dozen so-called "Technical Disciplines." Each Technical Discipline focuses on a body of knowledge (e.g. waste water management, soil reclamation, geophysics, drinking water management, and so forth) and maintains its own Intranet e-business portal of explicit knowledge complete with a library of specific management, trade and technical content, as well as guidelines, frameworks, case studies, templates, and examples of best practice. All content available from the knowledge portal is vetted by so-called "technical experts," who are senior members of their respective Technical Discipline communities. These portals also facilitate the sharing of tacit knowledge through discussion forums, meeting and conference event notices, Technical Discipline e-mail distribution, and an easily searchable directory of contact information on subject matter experts. As such these portals facilitate the distribution of the firm's explicit knowledge pertaining to a given subject area and also enabled the exchange of knowledge by electronically connecting those who need guidance with the appropriate lead practitioner. More recently, the firm has increased its attention to externally-facing social media platforms to promote and share its engineering and project management thought leadership on a variety of sustainability topics. The challenge they faced, according to Daryl Shepard, CDM/Smith Communications Specialist, was to leverage the expertise of thought leaders who were not very tech-savvy. Disseminating knowledge on social media platforms provides large-scale exposure, but also exposes the firm to potential reputation risk due to inadvertent posts, or opinions being relied upon like professional recommendations. As a result, policy guidance was disseminated to increase use of social media platforms, but in a manner that was (hopefully) not going to damage the firm's reputation. For example, guidelines Included details for addressing potential conflicts of interest, the importance of self-editing to avoid errors, corporate ownership of social media accounts and posts, and writing about what you know to "be interesting, stay out of trouble, and have fun. Case Study Questions 1. Based on the way that explicit and tacit knowledge is managed at CDM Smith, how and why would you expect it to; a.) impact the quality of what the firm produces for its clients and b.) moderate the risk associated with taking on large, complex projects? 2. Is there anything more that you can think of that CDM Smith could do to further improve knowledge management at the firm beyond what is described within the case study