• $140 million renovation of iconic hotel
• Tight schedule with no margin for error
• 530 participants from 82 organizations in four countries
• More than 500,000 documents and mail items managed on Aconex
• Information dissemination reduced from 3-4 days to instant

Client

Gammon Construction is Hong Kong's largest contractor with more than 3,000 employees and turnover in excess of US$1 billion. 

Project

Mandarin Oriental International Limited recently undertook a comprehensive renovation of its flagship property, the Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong. Built in 1963, and overlooking Victoria Harbor, the Mandarin Oriental is an iconic institution in Hong Kong and is regarded as one of the world’s legendary hotels. The US$140 million renovation program was intended to reposition the property by upgrading the facilities and services, while maintaining its classic, Chinese-influenced design.

Challenges

Rather than completing the work in stages, Mandarin Oriental completely shut down the hotel and undertook most of the refurbishment in a nine month blitz. Since the hotel would not be generating any revenue when closed (and newspaper adverts were promoting the reopening date) there was no margin for error in scheduling. 

The Client, Mandarin Oriental, and head contractor, Gammon, recognized early on that effective information management would be important to meet the deadline.

Adding to the challenge was that the project would involve a dispersed project team and international consultants. With such a tight timeline, the project team couldn’t afford to wait days for couriers to deliver documents between teams and could not risk someone not having access to the most current drawings.

Solution

Gammon selected to use the Aconex online collaboration platform to provide:

• A single point of access to information, regardless of time or location
• Fast distribution and tracking of documents and correspondence
• Incorporation of workflows to promote accountability
• An archive of all project information upon completion 

Results

During the project, Aconex facilitated collaboration between more than 530 project participants from 82 organizations, enabling Mandarin Oriental to meet its timeline and open its doors on schedule. From design through to completion, team members used Aconex to store and manage more than 381,000 pieces of correspondence and 138,000 drawings and documents.

Significant time savings

Russell Clewes of Gammon, Senior Project Manager on the Mandarin Oriental project, said: “The time savings were the biggest factor in using Aconex. At any one time we had 50 works contractors to collaborate with, including consultants in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and London. Using paper documents and couriers, getting information to them would usually take 3-4 days but with Aconex information dissemination is instant.”

“It would usually take 3-4 days but with Aconex it is instant.”

Russell Clewes, Senior Project Manager at Gammon

Because the initial development work was carried out using Aconex, the preliminary documents were then available in one place, ready for distribution to the wider consultant team for detailed design.

Comprehensive data capture

“Well over 90% of our project information has been captured on Aconex,” said Clewes. “If the system wasn’t so simple to use, people just wouldn’t have used it. Aconex is very user-friendly and the support ensured a thorough implementation.”

Unlimited training and support

“The training was instrumental in getting everyone to use Aconex. The time needed on this was critical, as people had to know how to use Aconex quickly and be comfortable with it. Following implementation, the ongoing support was excellent,” said Clewes.