Digital Knowledge Management Lead

Knowledge Management Lead

MDA (Maritime Domain Awareness) Engineering has scaled up, with a significant portion of the engineering work undertaken being developed at pace and with a core of engineers holding the knowledge, nuances and intricacies of the system and its architecture. This institutional knowledge is constantly at risk and is too valuable to be lost.

We have talented engineers with a broad skills and experience base, but the broad and wide technology stack at MDA means it is difficult to attain a well-rounded understanding that is necessary to sustain the capability in support of MOD and government operations 24/7/365.

We need to capitalise on the engineering knowledge base with MDA, grow our internal skillset and enable greater opportunities to scale, or pivot, based upon operational demands, by enabling a team where the burden of change can be shared equally and effectively through well-defined and easily attainable schema, documentation sets, best practices, and ways of working.

We are looking for a team member who has the experience to be at the centre of everything MDA Engineering does; you will need to weave the thread between abstract principles and the processes undertaken by the engineers. You will need to set the roadmap, implement the tools, and develop the standardised processes, structures, and documents to enable all members of the team to function equally when undertaking engineering duties. You will strive to solve one growing pain after the next, ensuring that at the end of a project the responsible engineering team is able to maintain it in the long run.

Organisational knowledge is a vital asset. Tacit knowledge, which is the expertise, experience and 'know-how' individuals bring to the organisation and the collective experience of groups of individuals, is often not quantified. We need a team member who can make important information easy to find and use for everyone else. You should be able to identify information that's actually important, and then build a system the team can use on their own.

Responsible for:

• Capturing tacit knowledge, safeguarding intellectual capital, and creating a culture of knowledge sharing that benefits MDA Capability and its engineering team.
• Leading and developing knowledge strategy to improve engineering performance:
• Boost internal knowledge and add value to the department.
• Build, manage, and set the direction of the Knowledge Management Framework and knowledge management team members.
• Promote the use of knowledge management tooling and processes to facilitate sharing of knowledge.
• Understand and recognise key challenges/roadblocks to KM cultural change and develop effective programmes to drive adoption and improve KM value.
• Build and drive the culture of knowledge sharing within engineering operations and serve as the advocate for KM initiatives within site operations.
• Identify and evangelise success stories from the Knowledge Management activities.
• Developing a robust roadmap strategy for implementing knowledge management that builds upon industry best practices and leverages tooling and process advancements.
• Create and review KPIs for adoption, usage of premier (high value, frequently used) KM content, and summarise benefits, outcomes, and improvement opportunities for the organisation.
• Evaluate, revise, and continuously improve the KM Framework workflow and procedures as the organisation scales.
• Bring relevant industry insights to incorporate into the KM Framework.
• Developing the engineering schema and produce the structure of the content.
• Build and enable the seamless exchange of knowledge across engineering operations and other organisations where applicable.
• Processes and tools to build, share and develop knowledge at MDA Engineering.
• Collaborating with management leads and the wider organisation to improve cross-functional collaboration to ensure that all knowledge is consistent, accurate, current, and relevant.

Requirements:

- Proven experience in establishing Knowledge Management processes to deliver impact.
- JIRA/Confluence experience desirable
- SharePoint/Teams experience required
- Background in technical or content authoring in an IT environment preferable.
- Adept at communicating and collaborating with teams of technical specialists to influence change.
- Knowledge of web, mobile and knowledge-based editorial principles.
- Proven ability to build relationships and collaborate with key stakeholders.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Further Context

What we require

Processes:

• Define the ideal behaviours to enable the team to share information.
• Ensure information is recorded in an appropriate format.
• Ensure information is stored in the appropriate place.
• Ensure the information can be shared effectively with relevant stakeholders.
• Design the guidelines, rules, and standards of excellence that will help reach those target behaviours; turn processes and formal routines into informal habits that team members don't need reminding of every day.

- Available Tools:

• Jira, Confluence, Jira Service Desk.
• Microsoft Teams, SharePoint.
• Slack.
• Udemy.

Three Pillars of development:

• Alignment Learning Infrastructure building
• Making sure team members have access to single sources of truth regarding who we are, what we do, where we're going, and how we operate.
• Ensuring team members have access to the means to acquire new skills or upgrade existing ones. Implementing and managing the tools and documentation, including creating and maintaining the associated processes and training to utilise the tools and processes

Transform MDA Engineering Knowledge management by optimising:

- From tacit to explicit. Move from internalised thoughts or oral conversations to a tangible format.
- From explicit to organised. Deliver a structured document that people will want to read.
- From organised to shared. Deliver a product that is a piece of content that team members know exists and can find easily when looking for it.
- From shared to evolving. Provide content that is updated regularly to keep it relevant as time passes.

While there are a significant number of knowledge articles available, they are inconsistent. There is also a significant amount of institutional knowledge that needs to be extracted. We need information to be documented and available if we want to succeed long term.

Why we need a Tech Author/Knowledge Management Lead

What you need:

Empathetic Curiosity

You'll meet and work with teammates with different roles, personalities, levels of experience, and workflow which brings up a broad range of issues. Empathy is key to correctly identify and scope out problems to work on (which is the first step to designing efficient solutions) and may also help you identify new problems that colleagues themselves are not yet aware of. Given your central position in the team and the number of interactions you'll have, you not only need to understand others well, but want to understand them better.

Priority Management

You'll be working on a lot of different issues which will all be important to different team members. They'll all feel important, and naturally you'll want to get through them all in good time. But some will obviously need to come before others. You must be able to establish the criteria and identify the stakeholders that will help you rank them and set appropriate timeframes.

Project Management and Timeframes

Timeframes in this role can be complicated; you'll need to be able to divide and plan each project efficiently and have the right rituals or routines to follow up on everyone's progress. This position suits those with an innate sense of structure.

Soft Management Skills

Understand that there is an asymmetry in the time dedicated to the projects you drive; they make up 90% of your time, but no more than 10% of your contributors'. You won't have any hierarchical authority over them as you will manage knowledge rather than people. You should have the ability to communicate the importance of the knowledge-sharing or learning projects to motivate contributors, while being firm when needed to push progress or get better quality from collaborators without demotivating them.

Communication

Communication is pivotal to everything you do. Enlisting fellow team members as project contributors or drivers, creating pieces of content yourself to lead by example, and crafting internal announcements to stoke interest. There's a lot of writing involved, lots of presentations and 1 to 1 conversations necessary to achieve the aim.

A willingness to get stuck in

Infrastructure builders need to really get into their tools, configure them, and make them work to their full potential.

If you are interested in hearing more or would like to ask any questions, please contact

Carbon60, Lorien & SRG - The Impellam Group STEM Portfolio are acting as an Employment Business in relation to this vacancy.