Algeria East-West Highway Development, COJAAL
Aconex Selected for World's Largest Highway Construction Project
Project
Due for completion in 2010, Algeria’s US$11.2 billion East-West Highway development is the world’s largest current highway construction project.
The development, financed by the Algerian Government, will extend 1,216km and ensure the link between Annaba in the north-east and Tlemcen in the north-west – passing directly through 24 provinces and linking Algeria to Tunisia and Morocco. The highway is a landmark infrastructure investment for Algeria that will meet transport needs, improve road safety and help create a profitable new socio-economic region capable of attracting investments.
The largest project is the US$5bn Eastern section of the Highway, which will be a 399km, six-lane motorway that includes 190 bridges and viaducts and five tunnels. This section is being delivered by COJAAL, a joint venture comprising five of Japan’s largest companies: Kajima and Taisei, Japan’s two largest contractors; general contractors Hazama and Nishimatsu; and trading house Itochu.
Requirements
Construction of the Eastern section of the Highway will involve a large volume of information flowing between around 2,000 project members, including the client, subcontractors, project
managers, engineers, consultants, suppliers, and COJAAL’s member-companies’ Head Offices, situated across Africa, Asia, Europe, Middle East and North America.
Thousands of documents and correspondence items will need to be managed and exchanged over the project lifecycle to ensure the project is completed on time. With so many parties geographically dispersed, the project couldn’t afford to wait for hard copy files to be sent between team members. This would also be difficult to track, leading to exposure to risks such as disputes, delays and information loss. Because of this, the project required a centralized system for storing and exchanging information that allowed real-time communication between all parties.
Solution
COJAAL selected to use the Aconex online document management and collaboration system. Aconex is a webbased system, delivered for the life of a project, that enables team members to manage their information using one central platform. This means that companies working on the Highway development are able to view, track and share their data any time, and from any location. Each participant can select to use the system in English, Japanese or French, according to their language preference. More than 50 representatives from the five joint venture parties unanimously selected Aconex ahead of other providers.
Results
Through using Aconex, the collaboration process has been streamlined. A key requirement for the project was being able to correspond quickly with other team members on items such as requests for information and advice. Users benefited from managing this through one system and from being able to track the status of each drawing and piece of project mail. The project team believes that using Aconex in place of traditional communication tools has saved time and money and helped control risk.
Mr. Minoru Ishida, Project Director at Kajima Corporation, said, “Aconex has enabled the five joint venture parties to manage and share information in real time. This will help us to deliver this significant project to the Government of Algeria on time and within budget.
“Using traditional methods of communication, such as paper documents and couriers would have been inefficient and expensive on a project of this scale – particularly when collaborating with international teams,” said Mr. Ishida. “Through managing information electronically using Aconex, the cost of controlling and distributing documentation is reduced, and productivity is increased by team members having instant access to information.”
Aconex is delivered on-demand, as a service. Having the system operated by a neutral third-party has encouraged participating organizations to store their data on the platform.
Mr. Ishida said, “Aconex will maintain a complete, third-party archive of all documentation throughout the project lifecycle, which makes it the ideal solution for this large-scale joint venture development where equal access to information is required.”
A key feature of Aconex is its audit trail that keeps a record of document revisions and ‘who did what and when’ on a project. The trail provides a secure archive of every transaction since the beginning of the project including every document revision, effectively eliminating the risk of losing important data.
“Because the system creates an audit trail which tracks all documents and correspondence, Aconex will reduce our exposure to risks such as information loss, disputes over variations, and defects caused by outdated documents,” said Mr. Ishida.
Mr. Ishida added, “A primary reason for Aconex being selected for the Algeria Highway development is the company’s ability to provide expert advice in good practice information management and on-the-ground training and support to all project participants, regardless of where they are in the world.”
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