Aconex Platform Selected for Public Infrastructure Stage at Bayside Waterfront Project in Toronto

By Balazs Szekely, Associate Editor

Toronto, Canada—Hines, Waterfront Toronto’s development partner on Bayside Waterfront, chose Aconex’s solution for the first phase of public infrastructure for the project.

Founded in 2000, Aconex has 40 offices throughout the world, including headquarters in Melbourne, Australia, and San Francisco. With more than 500,000 users and more than US$1 trillion of project value delivered in 70 countries, the company’s global customer base includes nine of the top 10 engineering, procurement and construction firms, 23 of the 25 largest global design firms and nearly all Fortune 500 construction and engineering companies.

Aconex provides a popular cloud solution for managing information and processes for the world’s largest construction and engineering projects. Its collaboration platform updates document versions automatically in a document register and stores them permanently in the cloud, as part of a complete project audit trail. It 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.

According to Mark Potter, construction manager at Hines, the master developer acts both as private developer and a public agency project manager and has many individuals and organizations that need to share project information and status. He said the company chose the Aconex platform for the Bayside Waterfront project in order to drive down tendering costs and to reduce risk.

The Bayside development is Waterfront Toronto’s largest private sector development project to date and it will transform an underutilized industrial area into an active mixed-use community and waterfront destination. Plans call for 1,800 residences as part of more than 2 million square feet of residential, office, retail and cultural space. The 13-acre site is located less than a mile from downtown Toronto, south of Queens Quay between Sherbourne Common and the Parliament Slip. The $910 million development is expected to gain a total economic activity of around $1.6 billion in economic output and create approximately 1,400 jobs.

The current phase of public infrastructure construction, funded by three levels of government, is valued at approximately $28 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.