Page 64 - Beyond Decommissioning

The fundamentals of industrial redevelopment 45

the D&ER project. Moreover, the redevelopment establishes a circular course for the
site life cycle: more redevelopment projects may follow the one immediately follow-
ing D&ER, and KM should remain until the site maintains its heritage values and use-
ful functions. Periods of many decades and even centuries can be assumed in principle
based on the experience from archeological sites.
In nuclear and radiological terms, KM refers especially to the restricted release of
the industrial site due to any remaining contamination, and to the institutional controls
established to prevent unsafe use of the site. But KM in the industrial redevelopment
has more components than safety: to preserve the industrial heritage of the site means
to preserve for generations to come the architectural and broadly meaningful values
that inspired the redevelopment. Of course, it may happen that these values will
change overtime and the memory of new values should be retained jointly with
new uses and added to old memories.
Advances in the emerging field of KM, the systematic and structure processing of
information, include the possibility of integrating industrial ecology into standard
business practices. As internet now allows to routinely provide users with universal
access to data and applications, the problem has moved to screening the huge volume
of information. KM should be able to efficiently deliver the right information to the
right person at the right time: this fully applies to the information relevant to the site
redevelopment process, in other words applied knowledge. The integration of indus-
trial ecology objectives with KM tools could produce systems and tools that use
knowledge to improve corporate environmental performance by lowering the infor-
mation barrier that prevents owners and others from realizing environmental oppor-
tunities (Wernick, 2001).
Personnel and other stakeholders (each for own area of interest and responsibility)
during any phase of a facility and/or site life cycle, including redevelopment, need to
be aware of past experiences and changes in the facility and/or site, and their knowl-
edge should be preserved and transferred to those taking over. Some of the key issues
in this process are the transfer of knowledge from personnel involved in D&ER to
those responsible for the reuse of the site, and the challenges posed by organizational
changes (e.g., new owners), a very frequent case over the long timescales of D&ER
and follow-on redevelopment. Fig. 2.10 highlights that personal expertise in making
best use of the redeveloped site is critical to continuing success of the project.
While KM is not limited to the preservation of data and records, it is recognized that
these play an essential role. A crucial activity prior to turning over the site for reuse is
the establishment of an information management system that will preserve the data on
the inventory of remaining contamination and any associated institutional or physical
controls. This is additional to the facility drawings and other relevant records. This
material is a part of the site asset and should be safely transferred to subsequent
owners: it is critical that the management of this information should be assigned to
the responsible parties at any time during the redevelopment cycle (Table 2.1)
(International Atomic Energy Agency, 2006a).
The successful maintenance of a redeveloped site can be greatly affected by the loss
of knowledge. It may appear at first that a sudden loss of knowledge (e.g., due to a
flood to the data storage system) will be more critical than a slow degradation