Dubai - MENA Herald: Drake & Scull International PJSC (DSI) , a regional market leader in the integrated design, engineering and construction disciplines of General Contracting, Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing (MEP), Water and Power, Rail, and Oil and Gas, and Water and Wastewater Treatment, has entered into a strategic agreement with Aconex, a global leader in collaborative project information management, to implement its highly advanced 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. Aconex’s project collaboration platform currently links 620,000 users across 19,000 projects in 70 countries, worth over $800 billion in project value. In the gulf region, Aconex powers 85,000 users across 3,500 projects including Dubai Metro, Yas Island, Qatar Rail, and Dubai International Airport Concourse 3.
Ahmad Al Naser, Managing Director of Drake & Scull Engineering, 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. Aconex is a trusted, proven brand and will help us meet our goals of cutting down delays in the decision making process and the associated costs. The regional centers of excellence will also benefit our local employees in markets like the UAE and KSA, familiarizing them with the global standard in project collaboration and document management platforms.”
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. The automation of workflows and other key processes has already reduced document approval cycles and decreased costs traditionally associated with information retrieval and will additionally help DSI meet its sustainability targets by lowering paper consumption. Within the last few months, DSI has successfully deployed Aconex on a number of key projects, including the AED 1.1-billion Lamar Towers, the AED 477-million Salboukh expatriate Residential Compound and the AED 190-million Al Dara Hospital, all in Saudi Arabia, and the AED 180-million Al Reef Residence in the U.A.E.
“This agreement represents an exciting opportunity and partnership for both parties,” said Rob Matheson, regional director for the UAE at Aconex. “It further elevates DSI’s leadership in utilizing proven construction technologies to deliver value and results to their customers. It is also another step forward in consolidating the leadership of both DSI and Aconex in the booming Middle East construction industry.”
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. The software already powers the company’ UAE operations and will be rolled out in other markets in a phased manner.
