King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

• Fast search across emails & RFIs
• Simplified consultant coordination
• Markup cuts printing costs & time

HOK adopted Newforma to manage the scale and complexity of KAUST, one of the largest and most technically demanding projects in the firm's Middle East portfolio. With a project team of 750 architects, engineers, and consultants spread across 12 time zones, HOK needed a system built for exactly this kind of globally distributed, high-risk collaboration.

Newforma gave the team a single place to search project emails, specifications, requests for information, and CAD drawings, cutting down the time spent chasing down information buried across inboxes and file shares. Newforma Info Exchange also simplified how HOK coordinated the models, drawings, and documents produced by KAUST's many outside consultants, while the integrated Markup function reduced both review time and printing costs across the project.

Delivering KAUST meant coordinating one of HOK's largest global project teams: 750 architects, engineers, and consultants working across 12 time zones on a 5.5-million-square-foot research campus with 27 interconnected buildings.

As with other complex, global projects of this scale, the team faced real difficulty managing milestones, coordinating information across dozens of consultants, and mitigating the risks that come with a project this large and technically demanding.

Before adopting Newforma, HOK's team on KAUST relied on more decentralized ways of tracking project information, a workable approach on smaller jobs but one that struggled to keep pace with a 750-person team spread across 12 time zones, where locating a specific email, drawing, or specification meant checking multiple systems and inboxes rather than a single, searchable source.

Newforma gave HOK's KAUST team a faster, more reliable way to manage the information flowing through a 750-person, 12-time-zone project. Team members could quickly search emails, specifications, requests for information, and CAD drawings to resolve issues and head off risk before it affected the schedule, rather than hunting across scattered inboxes and file shares.

Newforma Info Exchange simplified how HOK coordinated the models, drawings, and documents produced by KAUST's many outside consultants, keeping the project's many moving parts aligned. The integrated Newforma Markup function further reduced review time and cut printing costs across a project of KAUST's scale, adding up to meaningful savings on a job with this many contributors and this much documentation to track.