Getting Ahead of the Knowledge Gap: A National Guide to Anticipatory Knowledge Delivery for Transportation Agencies.
National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) · Government
Literature Review, Nationwide Stakeholder Engagement, and a Field-Tested Framework for NCHRP’s State DOT Members
Executive summary
State departments of transportation hold decades of institutional knowledge, but most employees can only access it reactively, searching for guidance only after they are already stuck on an unfamiliar project, a new piece of legislation, or an emergency they have never managed before. As senior engineers, planners, and program managers retire in growing numbers, the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) grew concerned that this reactive, search-and-find model leaves agencies unprepared to get the right knowledge to the right employee before a need becomes urgent. NCHRP wanted to explore anticipatory knowledge (AK) delivery, in which relevant, role-specific information is proactively pushed to employees based on their role, career milestones, or unforeseen events, rather than left for them to locate on their own.
NCHRP selected Iknow as prime research contractor for NCHRP Project 23-49 to develop a national guide helping transportation agencies create, implement, and integrate anticipatory knowledge delivery into their existing systems. The 21-month, two-phase engagement combines a literature review spanning public- and private-sector practice, structured outreach to state DOT knowledge management (KM) practitioners nationwide, and an iterative guide-development process pressure-tested with that same stakeholder community before final publication. The Iknow team is currently in Phase I, building the evidence base and stakeholder relationships that will shape a guide designed to give more than 50 state DOTs a practical, field-tested framework for anticipatory knowledge delivery.
Background & context
About the Client
NCHRP was established in 1962 through a three-way agreement among the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the predecessor of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), and the National Academy of Sciences, after state highway agencies were found to be independently researching the same problems with no way to share results. Today NCHRP is administered by the Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and is funded on a continuing basis by state departments of transportation, each contributing a share of its federal planning and research funds. NCHRP’s annual research budget runs in the tens of millions of dollars, supporting dozens of applied research projects addressing problems common across the country’s transportation agencies.
Industry Context
Transportation agencies are navigating a wave of senior-staff retirements just as their work grows more complex, shaped by new infrastructure funding programs, evolving regulation, and the growing role of artificial intelligence in agency operations. Generative and agentic AI have made it newly practical to proactively deliver tailored knowledge to employees rather than wait for them to search for it, a shift already appearing in commercial and defense knowledge management programs but not yet explored in a structured way within the transportation sector when NCHRP issued this project.
Current Situation
In October 2024, NCHRP issued a request for proposals for Project 23-49, Anticipatory Knowledge Delivery for Transportation Agencies, seeking a research team to identify the information transportation agencies need at different points in an employee’s career and design frameworks agencies could use to build an anticipatory knowledge delivery capability into their existing systems.
Problem / challenge
- A novel concept without a transportation playbook. Anticipatory knowledge delivery had not been widely explored or adopted by transportation agencies, leaving no established framework for the sector to draw on.
- Institutional knowledge concentrated in a retiring workforce. Role-specific expertise resides with senior staff nearing retirement, with no proactive mechanism to deliver that knowledge to their successors before it is needed.
- Fragmented systems with no anticipatory link. Existing agency KM and information systems are built for reactive search, not for automatically delivering knowledge tied to a role, milestone, or event.
- A guide that must work across 50-plus diverse agencies. Any framework needs to be usable across state DOTs with widely varying technology maturity, structure, and culture.
Project objectives
- Identify the types and sources of information required for a defined set of agency roles, career milestones, unforeseen events, and business processes.
- Create frameworks agencies can use to design, implement, and integrate an anticipatory knowledge delivery system.
- Develop a national guide covering key concepts, benefits, system architecture, sample use cases, resource requirements, and effectiveness measures.
- Build a communications plan and outreach materials supporting adoption of the guide across the transportation agency community.
Iknow’s approach
How Iknow Structured the Work
Iknow structured the engagement around eight core workstreams delivered across two phases: a literature review, a stakeholder outreach plan, initial stakeholder outreach, an annotated guide outline, an interim report, a draft guide and communications plan, a second round of stakeholder outreach on the draft guide, and final deliverables — reflecting Iknow’s anticipatory intelligence and knowledge management assessment methodologies for grounding a new capability in real practitioner evidence before publishing recommendations.
Key Activities & Decisions
- Evidence-based literature review. Iknow is reviewing public- and private-sector use of anticipatory knowledge, drawing on more than 200 prior knowledge management engagements and Mr. Leeb’s appointment as the U.S. representative to a NATO panel on anticipatory intelligence for decision-making.
- Built-in stakeholder continuity. The research team is completing NCHRP Project 23-17 on the business value of knowledge management concurrently, giving Iknow existing relationships with more than 50 state DOT KM practitioners to draw on for this project’s outreach.
- Two-round national stakeholder outreach. Iknow is conducting structured interviews with agency stakeholders in Phase I, then returning to a subset with a draft guide for structured feedback sessions in Phase II before the guide is finalized.
- Panel-gated development process. An annotated guide outline and an interim report each require Expert Advisory Panel review and NCHRP approval before Iknow proceeds to the next phase of work.
- Supporting communications materials. Alongside the guide, Iknow is developing a communications plan and outreach materials, including a summary slide deck, to support adoption once the guide is published.
Stakeholders & Collaboration
Iknow serves as prime research contractor, working directly with NCHRP’s Expert Advisory Panel and coordinating with AASHTO committees and state DOT KM practitioners nationwide throughout the research and guide-development process.
Challenges & how Iknow overcame them
Researching a Concept with Few Transportation-Sector Examples
Because anticipatory knowledge delivery has seen little adoption in transportation agencies specifically, a literature review confined to the sector would have surfaced little usable evidence. Iknow addressed this by extending the review into adjacent industries and government domains, drawing on its broader engagement history and Mr. Leeb’s access to NATO’s anticipatory intelligence research community to identify transferable practices.
Gathering Comparable Input Across 50-Plus Diverse Agencies
Collecting stakeholder input that is both candid and comparable across state DOTs with very different systems and KM maturity levels required a consistent, disciplined outreach process. Iknow addressed this with structured interview guides administered by a consistent two-person interview team, then validated the resulting draft guide through a second round of targeted outreach.
Results & impact
Progress to Date
The engagement began in March 2026 and is currently in Phase I. Iknow has initiated the literature review and stakeholder outreach planning, building on relationships and groundwork already established through the team’s previous NCHRP Project 23-17.
Anticipated Outcomes
- National guide: A publication-ready guide covering key concepts, the value proposition of anticipatory knowledge delivery, sample use cases, system architecture, and effectiveness measures.
- Broad stakeholder engagement: Structured outreach to state DOT KM practitioners nationwide, building on the 50-plus practitioners already engaged through the team’s related NCHRP work.
- NCHRP-approved milestones: An approved annotated guide outline and interim report, each required before Iknow proceeds to subsequent phases.
- Complete final deliverable set: A conduct-of-research report, the guide, a communications plan, an agency implementation plan, and outreach materials with a summary slide deck.
Qualitative Outcomes
Once complete, the guide is intended to give transportation agencies a shared vocabulary and a practical framework for anticipatory knowledge delivery where none previously existed, helping agencies move employees from reactively searching for information toward proactively receiving what they need at key roles, milestones, and events. NCHRP and its member agencies are expected to gain a field-tested, implementation-ready starting point rather than a purely theoretical concept.
Timeline to Impact
Over the 21-month engagement, Iknow is moving NCHRP from an unexplored concept to a nationally researched, stakeholder-validated guide, with Phase I evidence-gathering now underway ahead of guide development and nationwide dissemination in Phase II.
Iknow’s capabilities demonstrated
Core Skills
- Anticipatory intelligence design
- National stakeholder research and facilitation
- Government-sponsored applied research program delivery
- Knowledge guide and playbook development
Methods & Frameworks
- Literature review methodology aligned to TRB research standards
- Phased annotated-outline-to-guide development process
- Structured interview and workshop-based stakeholder engagement
Technologies & Tools
- Anticipatory knowledge delivery system architecture design
- Role-based and milestone-based knowledge-trigger frameworks
- Integration frameworks linking AK delivery with existing agency information systems
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