Commonwealth Law Courts, Savant CMR
A more efficient, more productive project
Project
The new Commonwealth Law Courts in Adelaide, South Australia, are a state public icon. It accommodates the High Court, Federal Court Australia, Family Court of Australia and the Federal Magistrates Court.
The US$70 million development is located in the city’s Victoria Square legal precinct on the site of the old South Australia Police Headquarters. The modern eleven storey building incorporates a number of unique features that make it an imposing structure on the Adelaide skyline.
The project was made up of three key elements. The main tower to the North, housing the courtrooms in the lower levels and the judges chambers higher up, a smaller tower to the south housing the court staff, and the distinctive 'Opal Building to the west housing the high court.
The development team included project managers Savant CMR, head contractor Hansen Yuncken, architects Hassell and consulting engineers Connell Mott McDonald.
Requirements
On previous projects, Savant CMR had relied on traditional methods of information management such as paper documents, couriers, spreadsheets and email that they found to be time consuming, expensive and open to human error. They were aware that construction of the Commonwealth Law Courts would generate hundreds of thousands of documents and correspondence items that would need to be shared between the project team. Because of this, they required an advanced solution to support collaboration.
Solution
Savant CMR selected to use Aconex, a web-based system for managing project information. Through using Aconex, all team members were able to view, distribute and track their documents and correspondence at any time and from any location, using one central, online platform. Over the project’s lifecycle, hundreds of participants used Aconex to store and manage tens of thousands of documents and distribute more than 140,000 pieces of formal correspondence.
Shane Harris, Project Manager at Savant CMR, believes that Aconex made the Commonwealth Law Courts development easier by making communication and documentation straightforward to manage. “The whole project team from the Client through to the tiler uses Aconex every day. With all project information available electronically rather than in paper files is an advantage which saves time and money,” said Harris.
On previous projects, there were instances where documents were duplicated for filing and often tedious to find. Through using Aconex, all information could be quickly accessed and shared. “Valuable time was wasted filing and searching for documents,” said Harris. “The Aconex system allows us to send general mail along with various other project documents including drawings, variations, invoices and time claims.”
Aconex enabled participants to track and manage drawings, approvals, schedules, meeting minutes and other files, in real time. Previously, project partners would have to wait for the paper versions to be printed, bound and sent by courier.
“The sheer ease of Aconex has improved our communication within the project,” said Harris. “We no longer waste time with fax machines or paper files to receive, recall or send correspondence. Aconex allows us to manage the high volume of information that we deal with every day, by providing it at our fingertips.”
The effect of losing valuable documents can lead to delays and disputes on a project. 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 provided a secure archive of every transaction since the beginning of the project including every document revision, effectively eliminating the risk of losing important data.
“In dealing with multiple tasks and documents there is a risk that some information may go astray,” said Harris. “Aconex has helped manage and overcome this.”
In summary, by using the system, Savant CMR and its partners saved time on the project by being able to quickly retrieve and distribute information, reduced administrative costs such as printing and couriers and reduced exposure to risk such as disputes and information loss.
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