Degenkolb’s Knowledge Sharing Platform

I have had the pleasure of getting to know the team at Degenkolb through Knowledge Architecture’s work on Degnet Connections, their new intranet. Degenkolb is one of the nation’s leading structural and earthquake engineering firms, with six offices on the west coast. The more I learn about Degenkolb, the deeper my appreciation for the design of their knowledge sharing platform.

By knowledge sharing platform, I’m talking about more than technologies like an intranet or video conferencing system. For example, Degenkolb holds an annual technical conference, a two-day face to face annual training program for project managers and project engineers, and boasts a team of eight engineers dedicated to new innovations, which they call the New Technologies Group.

I use the word design because it is clear that they have carefully structured their organizational learning programs and technologies in an integrated fashion. As the business has grown over the last seventy-one years, expanding in headcount, geography, and capabilities, Degenkolb’s means and methods for sharing knowledge have changed as well. Many of the changes to how Degenkolb shares knowledge were driven by systematic reflection, not by simply relying on organic evolution.

In a recent interview, Degenkolb President and Chief Executive Officer Stacy Bartoletti told me that the values of teamwork, openness, and flexibility underlie the design of their knowledge sharing platform.

“Five or six years ago we had some pretty significant holes in the way knowledge was being shared within the company,” said Bartoletti. “Each of our offices was somewhat an island on their own. There wasn’t enough communication, there wasn’t enough teamwork, and there wasn’t enough knowledge sharing going on between Los Angeles and San Francisco, between San Francisco and our Pacific Northwest, even between Oakland and San Francisco. Everybody was kind of operating on their own.”

In fact, Degenkolb’s knowledge sharing challenges had grown out of the success of the firm.

“We had a single office in San Francisco until 1995,” Bartoletti explained. “At that time we opened up our office in Los Angeles. In 1996, we opened up in Portland. In 2001, we opened up in San Diego and Seattle. During this time we also became decentralized. We started to allow our offices to become more independent, heading towards individual profit centers and towards pursuing the kind of projects and markets that they wanted to pursue, even though they may not necessarily be the core of what Degenkolb does. However, we recognized that it wasn’t allowing an opportunity for our engineers to get to know each other.”

Bartoletti and the leadership team were concerned because challenges to sharing knowledge between offices meant their clients were not able to benefit from the full range of Degenkolb’s experience and capabilities. Over the last decade, Degenkolb has rolled out one knowledge sharing program after another, each designed to build relationships and improve communications within the firm. The first such program was the Degenkolb Conference.

“You can’t talk with somebody, you can’t share with somebody, if you don’t know who they are, so we needed to bring people together and we decided we needed to do it once a year,” said Bartoletti. “And our format of doing that was the Degenkolb Conference, where we want people to talk about what’s innovative in the projects that they’re working on.”

Degenkolb’s Conference takes place over two days each June in San Francisco. All of Degenkolb’s technical staff participate, including interns and new hires who have not officially started working yet. Conference presentations are recorded in both video and audio format and are posted on Degenkolb’s intranet. Sharing technical knowledge is clearly an important goal of the conference, but perhaps more critical for the firm is making social connections between engineers who work in different offices.

“Typically we mix in one sort of team-building activity during the day, and then we have breaks for people to get a chance to network and talk with each other,” explained Bartoletti. “We have a big dinner and social function on Friday night, and activities on Saturday for people to get a chance to know each other better.”

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Images from the 2011 Degenkolb Conference |  © Degenkolb Engineers

In addition to the annual Degenkolb Conference, the firm runs a formal training program for technical staff once a year in San Francisco. Again, the emphasis is not only on content, but also on building relationships.

“We do what we call a Project Manager/Project Engineer training program once a year,” said Bartoletti. “So just like our Degenkolb Conference, we bring all of our project engineers and all of our project managers together once a year, typically for two days of sessions, and we focus on all kinds of different topics. It’s generally not technical.”

Bartoletti continues, “It’s face to face, and includes all of our Project Engineers through our Senior Principals. The mix of experience levels and backgrounds creates an environment for very experiential learning. If they’re talking about a topic like client relationships, the younger folks need to hear from the people that have been doing it for a long time. So we make sure our senior people are there participating with them.”

The most recent and most substantial investment Degenkolb has made in their knowledge sharing platform, is their New Technologies Group.

“The idea with the New Technologies Group is that they are a resource to the entire firm,” said Bartoletti. “Their role is to be looking externally at what innovations are being developed at the university, what innovations are being developed in the profession, and what we can bring back into our practice. They’re also developing innovations in and of themselves. It could be software development. It could be new processes. It could be new capabilities that we don’t have in-house.”

The New Technologies Group is made up of five permanent employees who have significantly lower expectations for billable hours than other technical staff. In addition, three engineers rotate through the group, supporting Degenkolb’s strategy of sharing knowledge through building relationships.

“Engineers that are on rotation spend 18 months with the New Technologies Group,” explained Bartoletti. “During their time with the New Technologies Group, they may be supporting projects across the company that need help with advanced analysis or applying new tools. A piece of their time is dedicated to the development of new technologies for the company, and that is overhead. So they work within the New Technologies Group for 18 months and then they go back to their engineering group. The idea is that we’re developing technical experts that are focused on innovation across the company through their time within the New Technologies group. They then bring that back with them to their engineering groups after they’re done.”

What I find important about this story is the way it illustrates that there is not a quick fix to the question “How do we encourage people to share?” Degenkolb has taken a multi-pronged strategy to designing their knowledge sharing platform, including both technology (digital) and organizational programs (analog), fueled by the insight that people want to share when they know each other and share a common purpose. Equally important is the insight that as the firm evolves, so must the knowledge sharing platform. Degenkolb is a great case study on how to proactively renew the design of a knowledge sharing platform.

If you would like to learn more about Degenkolb’s knowledge sharing platform, you are in luck. Mark Sinclair, a principal in Degenkolb’s New Technologies Group, will be giving a talk called “Engineering Innovation: Challenges and Opportunities” at KA Connect 2012.