FCRM Excellence: Coast

Sharing and Embedding Coastal Knowledge -Capturing Knowledge

Action: Discussion of and decision on suggested and alternative approaches for the South East

Background: Successful FCERM makes full use of experience. However, this knowledge is not always readily accessible to others. Often it rests in the heads of those involved. Even if it is written down in reports, we cannot access the reports unless we know they exist and they are readily available.

Many experienced coastal engineers in the Local Authorities (LAs),Environment Agency (EA) and consultants are nearing retirement and there is an urgent need to capture their knowledge before it is lost. The Environment Agency is therefore undertaking the initiative ‘Sharing and Embedding Coastal Knowledge - Capturing Knowledge’, where we trail different approaches to capture this experiential knowledge.

Five pilots will be held, one in each of the five coastal Environment Agency regions

Workshop (location based) approach:.Selected invitees will discuss and debate their current understanding of defined geographical areas or specific protection activities.Already workshops have been held in Anglian (the Lincolnshire coast) and the South West (the Isles of Scilly). The next one will be in the North West looking at the southern coast of Morecambe Bay. They have followed the attached agenda.

These focussed on defined area or project on :

  • discovering the existence of major data sets that were previously unknown to them (e.g. beach profile data, investigations into opening project specific dredging sites)
  • understanding the rationale behind works undertaken more than twenty years ago, and the whereabouts of design data and drawings.

The workshops to date have confirmed the benefitsthat arise when individuals are all together, provoking discussion, feeding off each other’s knowledge and so providing the full (yet previously undocumented) background to previous initiatives. Notes are taken at the workshop and a report produced.

Interview (individual based) approach: Where knowledge is dominated by one person, the workshop approach may not work and instead an interview approach may be best; for example accompanying an engineer along his coast and recording / transcribing the discussion with one or two other coastal practitioners.

Alternative approach: There might be other ways to ‘capture knowledge’ that come from the discussion

Generic Agenda for workshop

Attendees:

Those invited are individuals who have a thorough, wide and deep knowledge of the issue/location, those who are nearing retirement or who have retired, those who no longer work in the area, plus those who are currently responsible. They would be selected to give a broad representation of relevant interests such as coastal managers (EA and local authority), contractors, port authorities, water plcs, Natural England, former Defra Regional Engineer, etc. The maximum number would be around a dozen, but as few as four can provide an extremely valuable workshop.

Generic Programme for the day (for a workshop that focuses on a specific length of coast or estuary):

Item / Approx duration (mins) / Item / Responsible
1 / 10 / Introduction to the day and the FCRM Excellence Initiative / Mark Johnson
2 / 15 / Introductions by those attending – their interests / All
3 / 10 / Using continuous improvement techniques / Nick Ely
4 / 25 / Current situation in the area (existing defences, problem areas, major issues) / A coastal manager who knows the area well
5 / 30 / Discussion of item 4 / All
6 / 60 / History of existing and previous works, including fieldwork, studies, particular issues, contract strategies, designs. / All
45 / Lunch
7 / 40 / Recap of important data sources, availability, references, sources of knowledge, key people, archives and sources of expertise / RT
9 / 60 / Future actions in the area (problem areas, major issues, initiatives, timing) / Local area coastal engineer
10 / 20 / Future actions and persons responsible for tasks arising from this workshop, i.e. workshop report, data collection, maintenance of archive. / RT + All
11 / 15 / Other business / RT
Close of workshop

24th May 2013