DEA-Based Project Knowledge Management Performance Evaluation

A number of literatures from academics and practitioners have brought about various knowledge management methods, however few of them consider deliberately the issue of management efficiency. In this paper, we discuss the relationship between the project-oriented company's core competence and its project success, establish a set of index of knowledge management capabilities and put forward a quantitative model with data envelop analysis (DEA) to evaluate project knowledge management efficiency. Through a case study of five EPC projects from a same general contractor, we analyze how efficient her project knowledge management measures are and illustrate how to set benchmarks for successive analogous projects. Although the paper focus on construction case, the analysis and conclusions developed could be used more broadly to all project-oriented companies. At the end of the paper, conclusions and limitations of the case study are also given.