Eureka Tower, Grocon and Fender Katsalidis
Project
At 300m and 92 stories tall, Eureka Tower dominates Melbourne’s skyline and, when completed, was the tallest residential building in the world.
The tower is primarily residential, with 556 apartments, but also contains offices, restaurants, retail, a health and fitness center, a swimming pool and a car park. The top nine floors are named the Summit Complex and contain a function center, a nightclub and the highest observatory in the Southern Hemisphere.
Building began in August 2001 and required 5,000 tons of reinforced steel and 110,000 tons of concrete. The façade of the tower consists of 40,000 square meters of glass and aluminum panels, with the Summit clad in glass that has a surface of real gold.
Challenge
The construction of Eureka Tower involved project teams from over 100 organizations, and builder Grocon and architect Fender Katsalidis recognized early on that effectively managing the flow of information between team members would be vital in order to complete the project on time and on budget.
Solution
Their solution was to use Aconex, a web-based collaboration system, to streamline communication between project teams and securely manage documentation. Aconex stored all Eureka Tower project information – including documents, drawings, workflows and correspondence – online in one central site. This allowed project members to instantly view, track and share their information at any time, and from any location.
Results
Michael Fazzino, Director of Technology at Fender Katsalidis, experienced real value in using the web-based collaboration solution. Fazzino said: “Using Aconex on the Eureka Tower project enabled us to quickly, efficiently and accurately issue, track and retrieve data which, on a project of this size, is crucial.
“Over the course of the project, we saved time through having fast and easy information access; reduced costs such as couriers, printing and administrative staff; and reduced risks such as information loss and disputes,” he says.
Using traditional methods of information management, such as paper documents, filing cabinets and couriers would have been particularly inefficient and expensive on a project the scale of Eureka Tower. Michael Waters, Grocon Contract Administrator, believes that using a web-based collaboration system saved time and increased productivity.
“I couldn’t imagine running this job without Aconex,” says Waters. “For a project of this scale, with people constantly changing, we needed a centralized system that provided continuity of information. Instead of having to go to the file room and search through hundreds of files to find the hard copy of documents, people could find them instantly on Aconex. This easily saved an hour or two a day.
“On the Eureka Tower project, transparency and traceability were particularly important. With email, there isn’t the shared access to information, and that slows things down. When using fax, there is a record saying that something has been sent, but not what it is. But with Aconex, we knew exactly what was sent, where, and when,” he said.
Aconex allowed Eureka Tower contractors and project managers to track and manage drawings, approvals, schedules, requests for information, variations, meeting minutes and other information, in real time. Every document and piece of correspondence on Aconex was archived and its status tracked. This version control and audit trail ensured accountability by detailing ‘who did what and when’ and also made sure that everyone was working from the most up-to-date version of each file. Waters found that this helped reduce disputes and delays, and flagged any potential issues before they could impact budget or schedule.
“Aconex helped to give meetings clarity and focus. Five minutes before going to a meeting, our team could produce a report of outstanding items. This meant we could immediately say to the architect or the client, ‘This is all the correspondence we’ve had since the last meeting, and these are the items that are outstanding’ and get straight down to business. The accountability makes people do their job.” He added, “Also, because everything is so clearly documented, we needed fewer meetings.”
By the time Eureka Tower was completed in 2006, project participants had used Aconex to store and share more than 70,000 documents and 60,000 pieces of correspondence. Use of the Aconex web-based collaboration system saved time, cut administrative costs and reduced exposure to risk on the project.
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