Hines Chooses Aconex for Toronto Bayside Waterfront Project

TORONTO, ON--(Marketwired - Aug 26, 2014) - Aconex, provider of the #1 cloud solution to manage the world's largest construction and engineering projects, has been selected by Waterfront Toronto for the first phase of public infrastructure for the Bayside Waterfront project in Toronto, Canada. Hines, a privately owned international real estate firm, is Waterfront Toronto's development partner on Bayside Waterfront, which will contain more than two million square feet of residential, office, retail, and cultural space.

The current phase of public infrastructure construction, funded by three levels of government, is valued at approximately C$30 million, with completion scheduled for March 2015.This public infrastructure phase includes dock wall stabilization, a public promenade along the water's edge, and Merchant's Wharf, a new municipal street running to and along the water's edge. The promenade presented contractors with a number of challenges -- such as an overburden of environmentally impacted landfill with low bearing capacity and a high water table.

"Hines is acting as both a private developer and a public agency project manager," said Mark Potter, construction manager at Hines. "We have many individuals and organizations that need to share project information and status. We wanted to be truly collaborative in a neutral way, and Aconex is quite good at doing that."

Aconex provides an independent collaboration platform on which project information and processes can be shared and managed securely across different organizations. The platform updates document versions automatically in a document register and stores them permanently in the cloud, as part of a complete project audit trail.

Lowering the Cost of Tendering
According to Potter, Aconex was particularly helpful during the tendering process. "We did a lot of sequential bidding with trade subcontractors," said Potter. "Because we were able to host this information electronically, we nearly eliminated printing costs -- more than offsetting the cost of the platform. The Aconex Bid module allowed us to save printing and delivery costs that we had never been able to avoid before."

The complexities of the public infrastructure phase of the project increased risk factors associated with cost overruns and missed due dates. "The inability to process information is always a risk to a project," said Potter. "We use Aconex to generate overdue reports which identify logjams and bottlenecks. This has definitely helped us stay on schedule and within budget."

"Hines real estate projects throughout Canada have produced 10 million square feet of office, retail, residential, and entertainment space," said Frank Kopas, general manager of the Americas at Aconex. "We're pleased to be working with this premier developer, and we look forward to supporting the successful delivery of Bayside Waterfront and future projects."

About Aconex
Aconex provides the #1 cloud solution to manage information and processes for the world's largest construction and engineering projects. Aconex gives owners and contractors in the construction, infrastructure, and energy and resources sector project-wide visibility and control between the many different organizations collaborating across their projects. With more than 500,000 users and over US$1 trillion of project value delivered in 70 countries, Aconex is the industry's most widely adopted and trusted platform. The company's global customer base includes nine of the top ten engineering, procurement and construction (EPC/EPCM) firms, 23 of the 25 largest global design firms, and nearly all Fortune 500 construction and engineering companies. Founded in 2000, Aconex has 40 offices throughout the world, including headquarters in Melbourne, Australia and San Francisco, California.

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