Leveraging storytelling for effective tacit knowledge capture and management in the construction industry: framework development and empirical validation

Tacit knowledge—rooted in individual experience, intuition, and skills—is vital to construction project success but remains difficult to capture and transfer. Traditional methods like interviews, documentation, and video recordings often fall short due to cultural barriers, technological limitations, and reluctance to share expertise. This study explores storytelling as an innovative, engaging method to capture tacit knowledge effectively. Here, ‘storytelling’ denotes construction practitioners’ situated narratives that recount context, cues, decisions, and consequences from real project episodes; these narratives are captured, structured, metadata-tagged, and integrated into the Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) for retrieval and reuse. It proposes and validates a storytelling-based framework integrated into KMS specifically for the construction industry. Drawing on qualitative case studies from a major bridge project and an engineering consultancy facing mass retirements, the research illustrates how storytelling enables the elicitation, capture, and dissemination of critical knowledge. Findings show that storytelling creates a relatable and emotionally engaging environment, encouraging practitioners to share rich, context-specific narratives that traditional approaches miss. The validated framework offers practical guidance for construction firms seeking to retain expertise, improve cross-project knowledge transfer, and cultivate a learning culture. Ultimately, the storytelling approach supports better project outcomes, reduces rework, and helps safeguard the construction sector’s experiential knowledge base.