NHS Developments, Morgan Ashurst
Morgan Ashurst choose Aconex for NHS projects
Background
Morgan Ashurst (formerly Bluestone) is one of Britain’s leading construction companies. It specializes in the design, construction and refurbishment of hospitals, schools, and other public buildings. Morgan Ashurst has a network of 23 offices across England and Wales and is backed by parent company Morgan Sindall PLC.
Morgan Ashurst is developing NHS facilities across the UK. The new community health centers require a building design and construction plan that reflect extensive consultation with community groups. The plan includes maximum flexibility for use by a diverse range of health professionals, and will be adaptable to changing health needs in the future.
Requirements
With numerous design and construction projects across the UK, Morgan Ashurst required a comprehensive information control and tracking system. Working on high profile community projects, Morgan Ashurst also needed to communicate with a number of project partners and external stakeholders.
Morgan Ashurst felt that traditional methods of information management, such as paper documents, couriers and email, would be time consuming, expensive and open to risk, and so required a solution that would allow them to manage and track all their data.
Solution
Aconex is as a central, web-based platform for managing all project information, such as drawings, documents and correspondence.
Aconex enables allows all project partners to share, mark-up, approve and archive all documentation and correspondence online through one secure login site. Plans, drawings, and 3D models are stored online and viewed on the screen rather than downloaded by each user.
Results
Since the project began in 2003, hundreds of project partners from 79 organizations have used Aconex to store and manage tens of thousands of documents and distribute over 80,000 correspondence items.
John Howard, Pre-Construction Manager at Morgan Ashurst says: “Online collaboration is undoubtedly the way of the future for the construction industry. Aconex has improved our processes, bringing them all together from disparate systems into one logical network.”
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 piece of project mail. Aconex allows all project partners to be connected in real time. This means that no matter where project teams are located, they all have the same information.
Aconex allows project participants to collaborate in real time, regardless of their location. “One of the great benefits is that every piece of information is updated to the current version, so there is no conflict of information,” Howard says. “We’ve set up our own collaboration library of information, where we store and share information pertinent to project on a more general nature.”
Traditional methods of information management, such as couriers and printing can be expensive. Couriers can deliver documents to the wrong location or deliver the wrong one, which all raise costs.
For Morgan Ashurst, Aconex provided considerable savings. “We don’t have to waste time and money printing, photocopying, and distributing,” Howard says. “Aconex has saved us the cost of teams of people.”
A complete, searchable documentation trail is automatically generated throughout the lifecycle of the project - from design, build and construction through to facilities management and redevelopment. Comprehensive, searchable archives are particularly important for public and commercial buildings with regular upgrade requirements.
“Aconex has helped us to handle a great deal of detailed information more easily,” Howard says. "The streamlined information exchange saves valuable administrative time and reduces the risk of disputes. Project managers are able to track all correspondence, workflows, drawings, and procurement through one system, from any location throughout the life-cycle of the project."
Click here to download pdf
Back