As a fully integrated infrastructure firm, AECOM is a global network of design, engineering, construction, and management professionals partnering with clients to deliver a better world. This Fortune 500 company, named among Fortune’s “World’s Most Admired Companies” for the eighth consecutive year, was also ranked #1 in transportation, facilities, and green design, plus environmental engineering by Engineering News-Record in 2022. In 2023, Ethisphere named AECOM one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies for its commitment to integrity and making a positive impact. With their technical knowledge, local connections, and global experience, AECOM delivers specialized services across the entire project lifecycle.
As project management, engineering, procurement, and construction management (PMCM) experts, the AECOM project and construction management (PCM) team in China is equipped to modernize, expand, and deliver the most complex structures and innovative projects. The team runs 20 to 30 PMCM projects at any given time and continually partners with visionary developers and owners around the Greater China Region.
"The Springs F1D and F1E," located in the commercial center of Yang Pu District, is one of Shanghai's largest high-end, multi-functional, comprehensive communities. It includes twin towers with a main structure that's 280m and 250m high, and 50 floors above ground. It also includes a four-story commercial podium building.
One challenge of the project is its small site area, which shares surrounding roads with other F area projects, making traffic organization difficult. Conflicts with the construction of surrounding projects include Shanghai Metro Line 10, future Shanghai Metro line 20 Sanmen Station, and a 30-year-old combined drainage culvert (10m).
The AECOM team is using Classic/Next Generation/Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) solutions to address these challenges. ACC is a collaboration platform that’s enabled AECOM to manage issues, create checklists, assess trends, manage documents, and standardize project management. Read on for some of the ways that ACC has helped the AECOM team.
AECOM and quality assurance professionals previously did inspections according to construction standards. They filled out a problem list and sent it in writing to the relevant parties for rectification. However, on-site situations were complex and ever-changing, requiring a lot of communication to solve problems.
Oftentimes, the relevant parties would need to discuss the problem's causes and rectification goals by phone, in person, or at project meetings. With ACC, quality inspectors can create issues on-site and assign them to the relevant responsible units, specifying targets for the problem's modification and the deadline for completion.
With different company roles in one platform, contractors can receive information in real-time, rectify existing issues, and upload pictures of rectified work in the system. AECOM engineers only need to open ACC and check the status of the problem resolution and the history of its communication. ACC has saved AECOM over 120 hours per person per year.
Previously, special inspection contents were compiled according to the project's situation, and each project had its own list. This method relied heavily on the engineer's experience, and some inspections missed items, while some projects had unnecessary inspections that wasted time and energy.
Now, AECOM has created 100+ standardized Forms templates on the ACC platform according to the company's unified standards and requirements. This has formed the basis for daily inspections, improving management efficiency. ACC Forms can save time in writing repetitive checklists and helps construction management personnel supervise and rectify violations on-site, reducing construction risks. Also, project teams can save written records timely via ACC.
By establishing standardized checklists, AECOM has saved more than 152 hours per person per year.
Previously, the summary of on-site project issues mainly relied on manual statistics and calculations, which were inefficient and prone to omissions. In order to meet different project requirements, some statistics need to be repeated monthly or quarterly.
Now, the ACC platform records and tracks safety and quality issues in different stages of the project cycle according to different professional requirements. It can also automatically summarize and aggregate according to different needs. Through visual data analysis and problem classification reports, potential safety risks on the construction site can be identified, and the focus of management work can be highlighted, allowing for continuous improvement. Through the establishment of the platform, redundant work reports can be reduced, and all parties involved can see the information about the problems in one platform.
ACC Insight has helped AECOM to increase work efficiency by more than 15%.
The project started in July 2018, with challenges including a long construction period, many participating units, the nearby running Metro Line 10, the construction of the Metro Line 20 station, and an adjacent drainage culvert. Timely sharing of the correct project model versions and distributing project documents to the relevant parties was especially important for document management continuity.
ACC + BIM360 provides an excellent platform for multi-party collaboration and permanent storage of data. All historical records of the data can be compared at any time, and versions will not be lost. Additionally, the AECOM team has now standardized document access permissions and file naming rules in ACC. This way, when new subcontractors join the project or when completed subcontractors leave the project, the impact of personnel changes is minimized.
By improving efficiency, AECOM has saved at least 15% of the time originally needed for document management and distribution.
AECOM’s project management team handles multiple projects at the same time across diverse regions. The team's experience and capabilities vary, and maintaining high standards is both the goal and the challenge.
Now, the ACC platform streamlines document management, ensuring adherence to the company's uniform standards and requirements. AECOM has already established ACC standard daily record keeping and standardized daily special inspection records. By standardizing project management and sharing knowledge across projects, AECOM is able to maintain high standards and efficiency.
AECOM’s innovative use of ACC has led to the successful management of “The Springs” project. In addition to this project, the PMCM team has now created almost 140 BIM 360 or ACC projects, completing 90 so far. The 50 active projects have about 20 different people using the platform in each one. This level of collaboration and efficiency has a set a new standard for project management in China.
Yuhui Yan, Executive Director, Project and Construction Management, AECOM
