KUWAIT CITY, KUWAIT -- (Marketwired) -- May 17, 2016 -- Aconex Limited (ASX: ACX), provider of a leading cloud and mobile collaboration platform for the global construction industry, today announced that Sayed Hamid Behbehani & Sons Co. (SHBC), a 70-year-old global construction firm headquartered in Kuwait, has chosen Aconex to manage information and processes on the US$928-million expansion of Al Farwaniya Hospital in Kuwait City.
Located in the Al Farwaniya medical district, the project will include a new state-of-the-art hospital, an outpatient clinic for dermatology and physical therapy, a dental treatment and teaching facility, a services building, and a multi-story car park. To alleviate the heating effect of a desert climate on large expanses of exposed glass, the project will make use of innovative solar-mitigation screens. A distinctive, curvilinear building design will make the most of open views, enhancing the experience of patients, staff and hospital visitors.
Muntasir Abu Omar, the project director, said SHBC selected Aconex because it is a market leader in document management and control for large construction and infrastructure projects. Known in the industry for its ease of use, the Aconex platform has an extensive track record of supporting successful project delivery throughout the Middle East. Prior to implementing Aconex, SHBC had relied on manual processes as well as file management systems.
"The main benefit of using Aconex is having all of the project documents stored in one centralized location," Mr. Abu Omar said. "Nothing can be deleted, and it is easy to find and retrieve any item of correspondence, document or task."
Ensuring the Success of a Complex, Time-Sensitive Project
The Al Farwaniya Hospital expansion, an initiative of the Kuwait Ministry of Health, is an ambitious project on an accelerated timeline. The additional 955 beds in the new hospital will represent a 17% increase in the total number of hospital beds in all of Kuwait. The dental facility will include 157 clinics, and the car park will accommodate 1,400 automobiles.
To ensure that the project will be ready for handover in just four years, SHBC agreed to design, build, equip, furnish, operate, and maintain the new facilities. This approach, known as alternative delivery, is often associated with large, complex projects on aggressive schedules. Mr. Abu Omar expects that the project team, which is anticipated to grow to 20 organizations and 500 individuals, will eventually exchange more than a million documents, drawings and items of correspondence.
By adopting Aconex, SHBC guaranteed that members of the project team will be able to find and retrieve project information whenever and wherever it is needed. Updates to transmittals and design documents are automatically distributed to the team, with version control to ensure that everyone is working from the current revision. Drag-and-drop workflows keep review processes on track, and project-wide visibility makes it easy for team members to monitor performance across organizations and help minimize delays.
"In addition to getting accurate reports in real time, we have also realized improvements in the drawings review process," Mr. Abu Omar said. "I believe we are now getting our jobs done in less time."
Virtual Assets, Real-World Productivity
Building information modeling (BIM) allows project teams to create a virtual asset with multidimensional models before construction on the job site begins. Project collaboration using BIM improves productivity across the design and construction teams. Design reviews are streamlined, and clashes are identified and resolved before a site is graded and concrete is poured. The challenge is that creating, sharing and updating multidimensional models typically requires specialized design software that is not accessible to the entire project team, which severely limits collaboration.
SHBC overcame traditional hurdles to project-wide collaboration around BIM by taking advantage of Aconex Connected BIM. Using a simple plug-in, architects and designers on the Al Farwaniya Hospital project team can publish the multidimensional models that they create with their preferred authoring tools to the Aconex platform, where the rest of the project team can view, distribute and mark up the data using an ordinary web browser.
As the project has proceeded from the design phase to construction, team members have been able to link each object in the models with relevant documents, communications and workflows on the Aconex platform. For example, if a field inspector determines that an HVAC unit needs to be moved or replaced, he or she can tag the object in the model while on the job site. The changes to the object are automatically recorded in the virtual asset and available for review by the entire team.
"By utilizing Connected BIM and Aconex Field, we have accelerated our approval and inspection processes," Mr. Abu Omar said.
"The Al Farwaniya Hospital project is a major part of Kuwait's National Healthcare Expansion Plan," said Henry Jones, senior vice president of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and global accounts at Aconex. "We are pleased to support the Ministry of Health and SHBC in providing state-of-the-art medical facilities for the people of Kuwait. Aconex continues to expand its footprint across major infrastructure projects in the Gulf States, increasing the speed, quality and effectiveness of project delivery."
About Aconex
Aconex Limited provides a leading cloud and mobile collaboration platform for the global construction industry. The platform connects owners, contractors and their project teams in the construction, infrastructure, and energy and resources sectors, providing project-wide visibility and control between the many different organizations collaborating across their projects. With more than 60,000 user organizations and over $1 trillion of project value delivered in more than 70 countries, Aconex is the industry's most widely adopted and trusted platform. Founded in 2000, Aconex has 41 offices in 22 countries around the world, including headquarters in Melbourne, Australia and San Francisco, California. The company's ordinary shares are traded on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) under the ticker code ACX.
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