Dalmia Cement Deploys Aconex for Collaborative Project Management

NEW DELHI, INDIA--(Marketwire - Jan 7, 2013) - Aconex, provider of the world's most widely used online project collaboration solutions for the construction, infrastructure, power, mining, and oil and gas industries, today announced the successful deployment of its cloud collaboration platform by Dalmia Cement Bharat Ltd., one of India's leading domestic cement manufacturers. Dalmia Cement, which produces approximately nine million tonnes of cement per year, is currently using Aconex to manage projects at three production plants in the states of Assam, Karnataka and Orissa, respectively.

"The system provides benefit across the project -- time, cost and risk management," said Puneet Arora, executive director of projects at Dalmia Cement. "The time savings are definitely the number one benefit. Our project team is dispersed across the country, and Aconex allows faster coordination, distribution, review, and sign-off of files. The whole process is more efficient, and everyone can see what's required of them."

Among its three plant projects combined, the company's project teams have so far managed more than 110,000 items of correspondence, 30,000 documents and 3,500 workflow processes on Aconex. Approximately 95% of the project drawings are managed and processed on the secure, neutral platform to ensure transparency and accountability. Drawing reviews that had previously taken three days now occur in real time.

"One of the biggest challenges we faced was the bandwidth of our email systems like Outlook, which limit the size of files we could transfer," Arora added. "This meant we had to use FTP, where there was always the risk that someone could press the delete button. We did a lot of research on collaboration service providers, assessing 7-8 systems, and decided on Aconex due to their extensive industry knowledge."

Andy Lake, general manager of Asia at Aconex, commented: "The construction and infrastructure markets in India have been very receptive to online collaboration for project management, and Dalmia Cement is one example of this. We expect demand for our solutions to continue increasing as the country proceeds with its aggressive pace of development." 

About Aconex

Aconex provides the world's most widely used Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform for managing information, processes and people throughout the life cycle of construction and engineering projects across multiple industries. The Aconex suite of solutions -- secure, neutral and centralized -- enables project managers to reduce the cost and risk inherent in capital projects of all sizes and improve efficiency, productivity and accountability for all project participants. Aconex has served projects valued at more than US$700 billion, with over 300,000 users. Customers include nine of the world's top ten engineering procurement and construction (EPC) firms, 23 of the 25 leading global design firms, and nearly all Fortune 500 construction and engineering firms. For more information and examples of Aconex in action, see www.aconex.com. Follow Aconex on Twitter at @aconex and on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/aconex.