Billbergia Builds Wentworth Point Marinas on Aconex

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA--(Marketwired - Sep 1, 2015) - Aconex Limited (ASX: ACX), provider of a leading cloud collaboration platform for the global construction industry, today announced that the Billbergia Group has selected Aconex to manage information and processes across all of its residential development projects under an enterprise agreement. An Australian property group, Billbergia is one of the largest developers of waterfront apartments in Sydney and is known for innovative designs and commitment to quality.

Billbergia initially rolled out the Aconex collaboration platform to manage the Wentworth Point Marinas Project, beginning with Quarterdeck, an $85-million project of 286 apartments. This was followed by The Broadwater, an $80-million project of 252 apartments. Currently under construction are the Regatta complex, a A$100-million development of 332 apartments and six retail areas, and the Zen complex, a $150-million development of 403 apartments, a Council Library, a ground floor retail area, parks, and a private playground.

Aconex was selected to improve communication and collaboration among stakeholders and to help ensure that the projects stayed on schedule. Before Aconex, Billbergia had used a document management system that was slow and cumbersome. Monica Lemke, the company's projects administrator, said Aconex not only proved a better solution for document management, but the capabilities it offered to manage correspondence and forms, tenders, workflows, field inspections, and handover also significantly increased overall project efficiency and reduced risk.

Productivity Increased by 200%

According to Ms. Lemke, a key benefit of Aconex is to make information instantly available to the people who need it project-wide. With Aconex, everyone from architects and designers to foremen, site managers and site engineers are on the same page. Important project details aren't lost in email, and drawings can be immediately retrieved through keyword-based search, rather than by laboriously looking them up on an FTP site. Ms. Lemke estimated that productivity has jumped by 200% just by having reports and schedules in one place.

It took three weeks to configure Aconex for the Quarterdeck project and to get everyone on the project team up to speed. Even foremen who didn't traditionally use computers were able to rapidly master the web-based interface. "Aconex is very user-friendly," Ms. Lemke said. In the initial stages, the project generated about 15,000 documents, all of which were managed on Aconex.

As users became familiar with the platform, they discovered the benefits of Aconex Mail, which brings together all project communications in one central place, as well as capabilities for tender management. "We used to have to photocopy everything and put it on a CD," Ms. Lemke said. Soon, all of Billbergia's tender packages will be managed electronically, saving time and ensuring that the packages are always up to date.

Improved Field Inspections and Handover

Another valuable solution was Aconex Field, a cloud-based field inspections and checklists app that lets inspectors capture, distribute and track defects and other issues on site with a mobile device. In large projects, issues can multiple quickly. Billbergia uses Aconex Field to stay on top of thousands of small defects and make sure that they are all corrected by contractors within a five-day window. "We love Aconex Field," Ms. Lemke said. "It saves us weeks of work."

Aconex Smart Manuals, an operation and maintenance (O&M) handover solution, enables members of the project team to gather the documentation needed to comply with government regulations as the project is being completed, rather than piecing it together after the fact. In Australia, new buildings can't be occupied without an occupation certificate. To obtain a certificate, developers must document everything from building plans to materials. In the past, this information was gathered manually, Ms. Lemke said. With Aconex, handover documents are collected with just a click, eliminating stacks of paper and time-consuming searches.

"We looked at two or three other systems, but Aconex was the one with the most possibilities," Ms. Lemke said. Going forward, Billbergia will contractually obligate everyone on all of their projects to use the neutral, cloud-based Aconex platform. "When we can do everything on the internet, it just saves a heap of time," she said.

About Aconex

Aconex Limited provides a leading cloud collaboration platform for the global construction industry. The platform connects owners, contractors and their project teams in the construction, infrastructure, and energy and resources sectors, providing project-wide visibility and control between the many different organizations collaborating across their projects. With more than 60,000 user organizations and approximately $1 trillion of project value delivered in more than 70 countries, Aconex is the industry's most widely adopted and trusted platform. Founded in 2000, Aconex has 41 offices in 22 countries around the world, including headquarters in Melbourne, Australia and San Francisco, California. The company's ordinary shares are traded on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) under the ticker code ACX.

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