Drake & Scull International (DSI) has entered into a strategic agreement with Aconex, a collaborative project information management firm, to implement its software-as-a-services (SaaS) platform built for construction and engineering across DSI’s offices and project operations.
The Aconex platform will enable DSI to manage its project data and documents across all its offices and projects due to the platform’s project wide collaboration, scalability, controlled sharing, and easy online and offline access.
Through the use of the Aconex solution, DSI will be able to improve document control, increase productivity, reduce print outs, and recover lost time.
The company also plans to set up regional centers of excellence to provide its staff hands on training with the Aconex software.
Zeina Tabari, chief corporate affairs officer of DSI, said: “The Aconex implementation complements our recent ISO 27001 information security management standard certification, which spans our employees and processes and affirms the robustness of DSI’s IT systems and mechanisms. We have selected Aconex to implement its project collaboration solution across all DSI offices and project operations with an aim to reduce project risks, increase productivity and improve efficiencies. The increasing complexity of our projects and volumes of correspondence, combined with the increase in our workforce, necessitate the need to centralize and simplify project collaboration and document management.”
Using the Connected BIM capabilities of Aconex, DSI has also increased the adoption of modern technologies such as Building Information Modeling (BIM), allowing for real time three-dimensional (3D) analysis of construction designs to identify structural weaknesses, heat signatures and design solutions well ahead of mobilization on sites.
Within the last few months, DSI has successfully deployed Aconex on a number of key projects, including the Lamar Towers, Salboukh expatriate residential compound and the Al Dara Hospital, all in Saudi Arabia, and the Al Reef Residence in the UAE.
DSI is currently undertaking the implementation of Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, an integrated application suite of comprehensive enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, which is now the region’s largest ERP initiative of its kind.
