Knowledge Books! An Innovative System for Capturing DECADES of Expertise (+ VIDEO)

We all know someone like Gordy Bruhn, Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), and may even know more than one! At MnDOT, Gordy is the person who ‘knows almost everything about a topic—learning it through decades of experience’. He will be retiring … soon. Gordy Bruhn is MnDOT’s concrete specialist and senior engineering specialist. He was the first to go through a process called “Knowledge Book”—an attempt to capture his expertise so that it can be accessed by others, even after he retires. A Knowledge Book is both a document of a sort as well as a process. The process is involved, takes some time, and creates a complete picture of a person’s expertise.

The Document: Bruhn’s book (in the form of a PowerPoint file) is almost complete; is an interactive document involving charts, photos, videos and more; and, is a very large document … currently weighing in at more than 300 megabytes and 250 slides!

The Process: For years, HR and Knowledge Management experts have talked about the need to capture the knowledge of retiring Baby Boomers, but there was a preponderance of talk and not a lot accomplished. Mike Leegard, MnDOT’s principle investigator for this project, found a process called MASK (Method of Analyzing and Structuring Knowledge), which came out of a project in France where they were trying to capture the knowledge of nuclear power technicians. Then it moved to the nuclear weapon industry. Leegard came across it during a Transportation Research Board (TRB) presentation by Nanaka Mura, Kraft Foods. He contacted the folks in France that run MASK, and hired Jef Tendron, an aeronautical engineer by training and a recognized expert in the process.

The first step in the MASK process involved mapping out the critical knowledge. This is what Taylor calls deep knowledge or “capturing the art of decision making in complex circumstances”. Tendron met with Bruhn for a 60-to-90-minute scoping interview. After that, the hard work began. A series of interviews, both face-to-face and through Skype, began between the two. Bruhn estimates that maybe 20 hours of face-to-face and 20 hours of Skype interviews took place before Tendron went to work on translating the interviews into the Knowledge Book. Taylor stated that the first Knowledge Book took about a year to reach an near-complete stage—estimating that others could take about 6 months, if forced/driven.

Once it’s complete, it is sent to the author for edits and approval (in this case, Bruhn). Once completed, Bruhn will be the ONLY one able to change or add to the Knowledge Book. When he retires, he will choose a colleague at MnDOT to oversee, and carefully edit, his Knowledge Book.

Leegard said this project is unique for several reasons:

1. It will be the first publicly accessible Knowledge Book ever. The ones done for the French nuclear energy industry were, understandably, not public. Kraft’s books too were full of trade secrets. Bruhn’s book will eventually be out on the Web
2. Because of its size, the Knowledge Book Powerpoint file is a problem. It is not ADA accessible, which is a MnDOT requirement. Furthermore, it’s so big that accessing it via a tablet or smartphone—something you would want to do out on a construction site—wouldn’t work.
3. Taylor explained that a retired professor at South Central (MnDOT District 7) will be converting Bruhn’s book into a program called Articulate Storyline—an “e-learning app”. This will make it ADA-compliant and the content will then be streamed, rather than downloaded, making it much more useful for mobile users. Bruhn surmised that the actual book will be available by April, 2019.

Leegard has been very encouraged by the process and the results, and said, “When people used to talk about capturing knowledge, I never expected there to be this organized methodology. I think we all looked at it like it was smoke and mirrors. The thing I didn’t expect is there is actually a system.

The one risk he mentioned is that, right now, there are only seven people in the world who do what Tendron does—the interviewing and analysis and synthesis of the knowledge. And only three of them speak English, so the expertise to create these books is scarce. He also told Leegard during this process, “Engineers make the best MASK knowledge book writers because most of them are very technical. Beyond that, he says, you just have to be very inquisitive.”

VIDEO: Gordy Bruhn recently did a quick demo of his Knowledge Book at an Everyday Counts Peer Exchange where he explains the Knowledge Book! For Gordy Bruhn’s VIDEO (7:11), please go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=Nlp02c6RBwA

For the entire article AND the VIDEO in the MnDOT e-Newsletter titled “Knowledge Books: A System for Capturing Expertise”, please go to: http://www.dot.state.mn.us/mnroad/nrra/newsletter/currentissue.html?utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_name=&utm_source=govdelivery&utm_term=#kb

(Home page photo: Photo Image Cells from
Gordy’s YouTube Video captured by Amy M Dean.
Click for credit for: Black filmstrip outline)