BAE SYSTEMS - Underwater Systems

UWS is doing "the knowledge"

No, this isn’t an article about learning the London roads and streets to be licenced to drive a black cab; this is all about Underwater Systems (UWS) delivering a key aspect of business continuity, by preserving its “knowledge”.

In December 2005, UWS successfully completed the first wave of projects in deploying a Knowledge Management Programme into the business.

The project started some 15 months earlier. In the last quarter of 2004, recognising the ever increasing importance to the business of the knowledge buried within existing documents and systems and in the vast experience acquired over many years by the business’ experts, UWS decided to investigate how to establish an internally delivered and maintained Knowledge Management and Engineering Capability. At that time it was recognised that the business was at risk of some of its knowledge being inaccessible as staff retired or moved away from the business. Working with SOLASS, a specialist Knowledge Engineering Company, a programme of work was initiated with the Spearfish Torpedo Safety Engineering Teams at Waterlooville to establish the viability of the approach and the tools available.

Following on from the success of that pilot, UWS invested in a Knowledge Management solution consisting of a Knowledge Acquisition, Management and Publishing tool, developed by Epistemics, and consulting expertise from SOLASS to deliver six further Knowledge Management projects. These covered areas as diverse as Project Safety, Staff Single Point Failures and Succession Planning activity, Customer Training, the Acquisition of Business Intelligence and two projects associated with the UK MoD’s Submarine Launched Underwater Weapons (SLUW) Project covering Knowledge Capture strategy and Cost Reduction matters.

A formal Knowledge Management report has yet to be rendered to the SLUW Project as a Contract Deliverable. In November 2005 the work done to date was reviewed with the MoD’s IPT with favourable comment.

Such was the positive feedback and measurable success from these six Projects that in January of this year UWS continued its programme of work to broaden the use of knowledge management techniques across the organisation and to establish an internally delivered and maintained Knowledge management and Engineering Capability. This includes putting the Knowledge Management tools onto the desk of each employee engaged in the use of knowledge engineering techniques. A key feature of this year’s work is to ensure integration of Knowledge Management into the overall UWS business management capability as well as ensuring that UWS complies with Life Cycle Management initiatives such as Learning from Experience and Project Data Management. The solution complements and adds value to other knowledge management initiatives currently being undertaken elsewhere in BAE SYSTEMS such as supporting the Communities of Interest.

The Programme Sponsor, Vince Phillips, the UWS ILS Manager, who has led the project from the initial workshop, explains why he believes it has been such a success: “It was very important to have the commitment and involvement of the project engineers and to ensure that UWS were building internal knowledge acquisition and management expertise. For each project, prospective ‘knowledge engineers’ were identified within the various projects and then trained in the methodology and use of the tools. Awareness briefings were also held on Knowledge Management for some 35 domain experts who were to be involved in delivering knowledge into the acquisition programme. This approach will continue into the 2006 programme”.

The benefits accrued from the first six projects include:

· long term retention of expertise

· reduction in enquiries for information that could be easily published

· help in the selection of technologies for their intended applications avoiding re-design later in the project

· reduced induction periods for new staff

· reduced reliance on contract staff and reuse of existing project resources

Andy Williams, Managing Director of UWS, commented “One of the main reasons for the success of UWS over the years is the domain knowledge of our people. This Project will ensure that this knowledge is preserved and our success continues”.

Andy Harrop, Head of HR for UWS elaborates on the benefits to the project he headed up on succession planning: “The size of business that UWS is these days, means that we inevitably have key knowledge in many areas that are retained by a small number of people. This clearly leaves us vulnerable. What this project offers is the ability to unlock a lot of this knowledge and share it in a systematic manner. It also supports, and is consistent with existing initiatives such as succession planning, resource management and learning and development. The early signs are that people have responded very positively”.

Vince goes on to add: “A lot of the success lies in the fact that the solution has proven to be easy to use and the awareness training has encouraged domain experts to engage and provide high quality inputs. Already hidden knowledge has been uncovered and we can see the potential to improve capture and to maintain processes and procedures.”

The solution was created with an open architecture drawing heavily on XML technologies. It runs on standard desktop and laptop PCs, ensuring the investments made by a company in capturing its knowledge assets and developing the knowledge culture are protected.

The knowledge bases created by the solution contain both the hidden knowledge acquired from experts combined with the unstructured and structured knowledge held in documents and systems. In UWS the domain knowledge will be shared by users through publication in documents and on the Intranet.

In broadening the use of the solution, UWS will be one step closer to its vision of a knowledge culture of moving from a document centric view of acquiring and sharing knowledge to a methodology and knowledgebase-centric view. All employees originating knowledge will be supported by methodologies and techniques accessed from their desktop. The organisation will move from reactively to proactively capturing knowledge and expertise and the methodology will be used by all levels of staff whilst performing their operational tasks.

The use, duplication or disclosure of information contained in the “UWS is doing the Knowledge” article is released for multi purpose use as agreed with BAE SYSTEMS and SOLASS.