The northumbrian water case

British Journal of Management, Vol. 18, 224–240 (2007)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2006.00495.x

Working around the Barriers to Creating and Sharing Knowledge in Capital Goods
Projects: the Client’s Perspective*
Chris J. Ivory, Neil Alderman, Alfred T. Thwaitesw, Ian P. McLoughlin and Roger Vaughan
University of Newcastle upon Tyne Business School, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
Newcastle upon Tyne, NEI 7RU, wCentre for Urban and Regional Development Studies,
University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne, NEI 7RU, Email: [e-mail]
The article considers knowledge management issues from the client’s perspective. In the example presented, a sludge treatment centre procured by Northumbrian Water Ltd
(NWL), the task faced by the client was to manage knowledge in a context where the core technology being procured was new and resulted in the need for new knowledge to be created and shared both pre- and post-delivery. In exploring these issues, the article reveals the problems of (and some solutions to) managing knowledge across the project life-cycle and between different groups, where the motivation for generating and sharing knowledge was not the same for all participants.

Introduction
The article considers the knowledge management problems facing clients who are procuring complex capital goods.1 In the example presented – a
*This research was funded by the joint research council
Innovative Manufacturing Initiative Learning Across
Business Sectors programme, through ESRC grant no. L700257003. We are particularly grateful to all participants in the project workshops and those at
Northumbrian Water Ltd. who spent time with the project team during the data-collection process and provided feedback on this material. The interpretations in this article are the responsibility of the authors and should not be taken to represent the views of the company or its staff. We also acknowledge the helpful comments of the anonymous

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