Experience modeling with graphs encoded knowledge for construction industry

• Knowledge management for continuous improvement in construction engineering projects.
• Conceptual modeling for knowledge sharing on good practices and top lessons learned.
• Domain ontology helps acquire work-related vocabulary and specify useful experience.
• Knowledge exploitation as an instrument of problem solving and preventive actions.
• Conceptual Graphs encoded knowledge for visual representation and formal reasoning.

The Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry is becoming increasingly knowledge intensive. Knowledge management has been hailed as an enabler for tapping this knowledge to improve efficiency in the AEC industry. In this study, the main concepts and benefits of knowledge management, relationships between knowledge management and continuous improvement have been examined. Furthermore, emphasis has been laid on knowledge management through experience feedback processes which constitute valuable assets for the AEC industry. This is done through the employment of ontologies and graph-based reasoning operations in eliciting and visualizing knowledge concepts in the AEC domain. The proposed approach which consists of two main aspects provides the opportunity to examine the conceptual and ontological knowledge models with associated reasoning. In the first, the concepts of knowledge management, their significance and application in the AEC field are discussed. The second deals with a methodological framework for the modeling and reasoning in the domain ontology. To facilitate automation, an ontology graph-based editor, Conceptual Graphs User Interface (CoGui) was used to model knowledge and encoded reasoning in the knowledge base. CoGui encodes knowledge as conceptual graphs and reasoning as graph operations that can be visualized in a logically precise way, based on domain ontologies. It emerged that CoGui could be very useful in acquiring information that can be used in collaboration with others to continuously improve information sharing and re-use. A French AEC company located in the Southwest region was employed as a case study in illustrating knowledge modeling through the experience feedback process. For each phase of experience feedback, actions that were implemented in the company are discussed.