Newland Communities Selects Aconex for Symphony Park Las Vegas Development

LAS VEGAS, March 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Aconex, the world's largest provider of project collaboration solutions to the construction industry, will service Newland Communities and its project partners on the US$6 billion Symphony Park mixed-use development in downtown Las Vegas.

The web-based Aconex system will enable Newland Communities to manage the large volume of information generated during the development, and communicate more efficiently with City representatives and the project team.

Symphony Park is a public-private urban redevelopment project that, when complete, will be a 10 million square foot, 61-acre mixed-use community that will act as a catalyst for further development in the downtown area. Newland Communities, the project manager, will also be the developer for five city blocks in Symphony Park, which will include urban-style residences, medical facilities, hotels and retail.

Newland Communities' VP Operations, Sam Gladstein, found that the tools previously utilized for managing project information weren't sufficient to handle a project of such scope and magnitude and were leading to inefficiencies and potentially increased project risk.

Gladstein said: "We were using typical MS Office products and storing information on a shared drive. Before long there were just too many documents and too many folders, and no simple way to locate things at a moment's notice. Document transfer was always cumbersome, either through the use of email, which limits your file size, or through the use of an FTP site, which is difficult to operate in a secure fashion."

He added, "The biggest problem, particularly when dealing with consultants and City representatives, is that everyone had their own system for managing data. If we needed a document, we had to call them and ask them to send it over, and vice-versa. The result was that a lot of time was being wasted. Having gone through these frustrations, we came to a point where we needed a better way of managing things."

Newland Communities and the city of Las Vegas selected to implement Aconex for the duration of the development. The system allows all project participants to access, distribute, track and store their documents and correspondence in real time using a single, common platform.

"As project managers, data control is everything. With Aconex, its ease of use and the time savings it provides are fundamental. In particular, the ability to disseminate information to parties as quickly as possible is extremely valuable. If a third party developer needs a document, we can just give them access to the system. It's a much cleaner collaborative process," said Gladstein.

For Newland, the main benefit of using Aconex remains that is centralizes and streamlines project communication. Instead of each organization having its own silo of information, there will be a single, common, transparent platform for managing project data.

Gladstein added, "Aconex will help to link Newland's efforts at Symphony Park with the City, consultants, lawyers and any other stakeholders. These days it's all about being collaborative and instantaneous and so it's essential to have effective systems like Aconex in place."

From its 35 offices worldwide, Aconex, www.aconex.com, services $220 billion worth of projects across 65 countries. The system is delivered using the Software as a Service -- SaaS -- model and clients include AECOM, Parsons Brinckerhoff, Las Vegas Sands, IKEA and McDonald's Restaurants.

Newland Communities, America's largest privately-held community developer, focuses on creating residential and urban communities across the United States. Headquartered in San Diego, the company currently has nearly 40 communities underway in 14 states.

The five city blocks within Symphony Park that Newland Communities is the developer for will include the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, The Smith Center for the Performing Arts, The Charlie Palmer boutique hotel, The World Jewelry Center, Forest City casino-hotel, and medical and office facilities.

SOURCE Aconex