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Cold hard facts on collaborative savings
Most people talk about the cost savings and efficiencies that collaborative systems can provide, but cold hard facts are often hard to come by.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
We have just completed a case study with Saudi Oger in Abu Dhabi. Saudi Oger is one of the leading construction and property development companies in the Middle East and used Aconex on the Sowwah Square development - also known as the Abu Dhabi Financial Centre.
The project team used Aconex for document control and also used the workflows module and the online viewer for document and shop drawing reviews. Following this, they stated that they saved $550k in print costs, and (thanks to Workflows) improved their document review cycles by 20%. The project managed over 1.3 million documents and over 500,000 correspondence items, so the volumes were quite large (although still an order of magnitude smaller than some of our larger projects).
Gerard Couturier (the A&E Division Director) said, "Workflows significantly accelerated and improved the quality of the process. When using hard copies and an FTP site, a 10-day review process often turned into 12 days due to the administrative work required. With Aconex 10 days actually meant 10 days."
This finding is not news to some. As I have heard someone in the industry say recently - "People do not question whether they need a tower crane on a project or not - they intuitively know that they will save money compared to carrying bricks up the stairs on their backs. Now, people are starting to realize the same thing about collaborative systems. Compared to in-house systems or hard copy, they know it will save them real money." Amen.
CIO Magazine's Strategic 100
Some recognition that Aconex is doing good things, this time from CIO Magazine, which has placed us in their annual list of businesses that are "showing signs of seriously influencing the way technology is bought or deployed". The list is an "indicator of companies that are currently impressing savvy CIOs", and is part of CIO Magazine's Strategic 100, compiled by judges that include analysts from ueber-respected firms like Gartner, Forrester, IDC, Ovum and Frost & Sullivan.
CIO Magazine is published in New Zealand, with an Asia-Pacific focus. You could say (to borrow a famous NZ advertising line) that it's "World-famous in New Zealand", which is fine with us, because we've found New Zealand to be at the forefront of collaboration technology adoption. (Incidentally, you can view that classic NZ advert here. But be warned: there are thighs. And very bad hair-dos).
Friday, November 20, 2009
CIO Magazine is published in New Zealand, with an Asia-Pacific focus. You could say (to borrow a famous NZ advertising line) that it's "World-famous in New Zealand", which is fine with us, because we've found New Zealand to be at the forefront of collaboration technology adoption. (Incidentally, you can view that classic NZ advert here. But be warned: there are thighs. And very bad hair-dos).
BIM gowth continues
I just read a post on the Building Design & Construction Network (www.bdc.com) that talks about BIM adoption amongst US firms. If you are a regular reader of blogs in the construction space (including Extranet Evolution), you may have noticed that BIM is becoming more and more common throughout the industry. It is no longer a question of whether BIM will replace traditional CAD systems, but when.
Essentially, the report states that BIM adoption has reached that tipping point. Indeed, the title of the article is "BIM adoption rate exceeds 80% among nation's largest AEC firms". This is certainly no surprise, although it is less obvious how extensively BIM is actually used in these organizations. Having a BIM license is not the same as using it! But BIM was always going to be adopted first by the very largest companies working on the larger projects, where complexity and coordination issues are magnified.
The interesting point will now be two-fold:
- When will BIM penetrate down into the not-so-enormous firms? and
- When will BIM systems allow central hosting of the model with people able to remote access and *edit* this model without having to download it?
Sure, people can use collaboration systems to store, distribute, share and even view BIM models (Aconex and others allow all these functions now, which is great for most users), but the real nirvana will be when the BIM model can be manipulated remotely. Bring on the future!
Collaborating for a good cause: the result (with video)
Time for an update on Monday's post written "live" as 70 colleagues and I renovated a classroom for a children's home in Kuala Lumpur.
The task was a teambuilding event, part of our company's 3-day global
sales conference that has just finished up in the Malaysian capital. We had six hours to do everything needed to turn a disused double garage into a bright, inspirational classroom for some of the 43 kids at the home. While our company, Aconex, started the ball rolling with a donation, a large part of the challenge to staff was to raise funds, on the day, for materials, furniture, and whatever we would need to put on dinner and a party for the children that night. My blog post on Monday was part of that fundraising effort.
The result far exceeded what we, and the Lighthouse home, had dared to hope for. By the end of the day, we had raised over RM30,000 (close to US$10,000), an amount that goes a long, long way in Malaysia. We received support and introductions from members of the Malaysia Australia Business Council, and from the Malaysian chapter of The Lighthouse Club, a construction industry charity (that shares a name with the children's home, but is otherwise not related).
As well as Aconex staff, many of our suppliers and clients came on board, with donations of either cash or materials. One highlight was the gift of an air conditioning unit from from ANZ Cool (thanks to Ms Kuan at the Subang Jaya outlet). Another was the offer by the hotel we were staying at (www.pacific-regency.com) to make the Lighthouse home their corporate good cause for December. A proportion of all food and beverage revenue will go to the home, as will money raised at the hotel chain's corporate Christmas party, and there will be a month long promotional tie in with a local radio station, too. We are hoping that all of this will raise at least another RM50,000, or US$15,000.
You can still make a donation (until 30 Nov 2009) at www.paypal.com. The account is lighthouse@aconex.com. All donations will go directly to the Lighthouse home, and you can read more about their great work here
A final note: part of the challenge was to make, within the six hours, a video that the Lighthouse can use to show other potential corporate supports what can be achieved in an afternoon of fun and hard work. You can see that below.
Again, thanks to those who showed such great support.
Collaborating for a good cause
As part of a teambuilding challenge at our company's worldwide sales workshop in Malaysia today, I and 70 colleagues from Aconex are building a classroom for 43 fantastic kids who live in the Lighthouse home here in Kuala Lumpur. We started three hours ago and have until 6pm (KL time) today to complete the task!
We have split into project teams (construction, decoration, catering and fundraising).
We have to raise AU$3,000 to buy the construction materials we need to complete the project. We need all the help we can get if we are to get these children the classroom they need!
All of our staff worldwide are pitching in and we're asking friends in the industry to pitch in too.
You can read about the great work of the Lighthouse home here www.lighthousewelfare.org and you can contribute to this great cause by donating through PayPal (go to www.paypal.com) and send money to the account we have setup using lighthouse@aconex.com. Please help promote this live appeal in the next few hours if you can. Remember our cut off time to buy the materials we need is 6pm KL time, 9pm Sydney, 10am London!
Monday, October 19, 2009
We have split into project teams (construction, decoration, catering and fundraising).
We have to raise AU$3,000 to buy the construction materials we need to complete the project. We need all the help we can get if we are to get these children the classroom they need!
All of our staff worldwide are pitching in and we're asking friends in the industry to pitch in too.
You can read about the great work of the Lighthouse home here www.lighthousewelfare.org and you can contribute to this great cause by donating through PayPal (go to www.paypal.com) and send money to the account we have setup using lighthouse@aconex.com. Please help promote this live appeal in the next few hours if you can. Remember our cut off time to buy the materials we need is 6pm KL time, 9pm Sydney, 10am London!
Labels: Good practice
Google wave in 2 minutes
In a follow up to my post on Google wave, a friend pointed me to a slick video that describes Google Wave in just 2 minutes (much easier to digest than the 1hr+ intro video from Google!). You can watch the video here.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
As I mentioned in my previous post I mentioned that we saw Wave as a great enabler or embedded technology for collaboration tools. The more I see wave, the more I am convinced of that. You will see some Wave enabled stuff coming from us in the next while.
Labels: Global trends, Technology
Getting F1 to the checkered flag...
I don't like to talk specifically about Aconex (this is not a marketing blog, after all!), but the Yas Island project is one that I mention, purely because of it's size and the volumes of information that were generated and managed on that project and this information may be interesting to some of you.
Some background: Yas Island is a US$40 billion, 25 km2 development located off the city of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. The development includes the Yas Marina Circuit that will host the Abu Dhabi Formula One Grand Prix in 2009, as well as world-class hotels, theme parks, golf courses, shopping malls, marinas, apartments and villas. Highlights include the Warner Bros. Theme Park, the Yas Island Water Park and the world's first Ferrari theme park. The developer, ALDAR, is the premier property development, investment and management company in Abu Dhabi.
With the track and related infrastructure needing to be completed by race day on November 1, the pressure was really on. The project team was (typically for a project of this scale) widely distributed across the globe (around 95% of the organizations engaged on Yas Island have their head office located outside of the Middle East). Turnover of staff (and even organizations) is quite common, so having continuity of documentation and information is a challenge that (if not handled well) can cause projects like this to quickly come unstuck.
The sheer scale of documentation and information flow on this mega project is quite amazing. Some of the amazing stats include (and keep in mind that this is only 2 1/2 years into the development):
- More than 5,700 users
- From 380 companies
- Located in 29 countries
- More than 8 million documents and correspondence items.
- Within the first six months of the project, more than 1,000 people from 80 companies had been trained and were using the system.
Would projects like Yas Island be possible without a web based collaboration tool? I would say quite emphatically - no! The coordination and approvals alone would be mind blowing and the handover process would have taken months longer.
Labels: Global trends, Good practice, Project profiles, Technology
Improving transparency, accountability and efficiency on ARRA projects
Continuing my US government theme... Earlier today we released a white paper called, "Three critical challenges on any ARRA construction project, and how to overcome them with online collaboration". Although it's written for firms engaged on economic stimulus projects in the US, the content is relevant for anyone involved in construction/infrastructure works.The paper references an interesting post by Jim Till on his Just Sharing blog called "ARRA Stimulus Funds and Your ECM Project?".
Labels: Global trends, Good practice, Technology
Five things to know before going to Libya
We've talked before on this blog (here and here) about Libya's construction market - for some AEC firms, it's been a rare bright spot in the current gloom. Our Regional Manager Europe, Yuval Attias, has written an article for UK-based Building magazine called "Five things to know before going to Libya". If you're thinking about entering this market, or are interested to see what the fuss is about, it's well worth a read.
Labels: Global trends
