Consulting engineering is a business service industry, which relies heavily on
project teamwork in producing knowledge for its professional service products.
Engineering practices and knowledge areas encompass mainly civil, mechanical and
electrical engineering, buildings physics, project and construction management,
which are typically pictured as knowledge-intensive activities. Such practices are
here understood as local cultures, communities of practices, with a continuous and
inherent sociopolitical element of negotiations of knowledge claims. Drawing on a
ve-month participant observation and interview study, the article illustrates how
teamworking occurs under continuous pressures from structural, organizational,
professional and individual sources. The organization attempts in its knowledge
production to combine practical experience, formalized information, external
alliances and customer demands. Corporate management and project teamwork are in a
state of latent con.ict. A series of management initiatives, including IT, address
the production of knowledge. This can be seen as a combination of responses to
external contingencies and at the same time development of internal resources within
the conditions of possibility. Due to a continuous regime of ‘getting
things done’ on the ongoing projects – what the author terms the
tyranny of projects – cross-project learning and knowledge transfer are hindered.
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