Building in the Sky

Janis is an award-winning journalist and editor who has covered many industries beyond project management, including health care, financial services, higher education and retail sales.

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The Richmond Olympic Oval, a multiuse sports facility showcased during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, benefited from coordinated, cloud-based collaboration among engineers, architects and contractors dealing with a compressed schedule and little margin for error. The virtual environment also helped to minimize environmental impact.

As fast as speed skaters raced around the ice track in the Richmond Olympic Oval —that’s how fast the building itself had to be built. At the center of the effort was Cannon Design, the architect responsible for the award-winning, sustainable-design facility in Richmond, B.C., Canada. The venue was completed more than a year prior to the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, and the construction process on the $155 million (Canadian) building took 20 months.

Cannon’s Principal and Director of Construction Administration Gustavo Lima, AIA, LEED AP, says the Oval was opened on schedule and on budget with minimal environmental impact. One major factor in that success was creating a virtual environment that enabled dozens of architects, engineers and construction managers in multiple offices across North America to access and collaborate on documents from a single portal, Lima says. The tool that facilitated the virtual environment was Oracle’s Primavera Contract Management, which helped Cannon reduce risk and improve productivity, …

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