McLaren Construction Accelerates Its Digital Transformation with Cooperlink

In the construction sector, operational efficiency depends on eliminating information silos between digital tools. This is the challenge McLaren Construction set out to overcome.

Their goal: to effectively connect their Common Data Environment (CDE), Asite, with their site management tool, Dalux, in order to eliminate the manual export of drawings and files between the two systems.

Tom Gothard, who leads the digitalisation of McLaren Construction’s projects, took on this challenge by partnering with Cooperlink. He agreed to share his experience with us.

The Integration Challenge: Connecting Asite to Dalux

Like many companies in the sector, McLaren had to juggle multiple digital solutions: Asite for document management and Dalux for site operations. Manually transferring documents between the two platforms was slowing down teams and leading to errors.

It was in this context that McLaren turned to Cooperlink to develop an intelligent connector. Thanks to automation based on metadata, statuses, revisions, and document coding, Cooperlink enabled smooth and reliable synchronisation between the two systems.

Agile Deployment and Immediate On-Site Success

McLaren Construction and Cooperlink drafted a technical specification describing the necessary processes, workflows, and triggers. Based on this initial analysis, McLaren launched three pilot projects across different regions of the UK.

The result? A resounding success!

Teams now have access to the latest construction drawings, 3D models, and execution plans directly on their smartphones and tablets, allowing them to use the information on site for operations such as logistics and quality control.

Interoperability as the Cornerstone of the Digital Strategy

Tom Gothard explains: ‍

At McLaren, we see integration as the future of construction technology.

In a fragmented market, where tool functionalities often overlap and digital platforms multiply, it is essential to centralise information and maintain a single source of truth.

“In the past, for example, we had discrepancies between the data in Dalux and the data in Asite.”

Information must be able to flow and remain up-to-date across all the tools used. The goal? To have one reliable source of data that is accessible to all project stakeholders, whether they are on site or in the office.

A Tailor-Made and Promising Collaboration with Cooperlink

Tom Gothard explains:

‍Since the beginning, nearly a year ago, our collaboration with Cooperlink has been fruitful. We’ve been able to leverage our expertise to develop a custom integration that we can deploy across all our projects, in line with our standards, templates, and systems.

McLaren highlights Cooperlink’s flexibility and responsiveness, including its ability to manage technically complex operations. For example, Cooperlink can handle the extraction of IFC files and directory structures from Asite, in order to synchronise the right information into Dalux.

Cooperlink is also highly adaptable. It enables data mapping between tools and provides reporting to ensure the quality of the synchronisation.

This collaboration is just the beginning: McLaren plans to continue its efforts to consolidate all project data into a single source of truth. The company is already considering expanding the use of Cooperlink Construction Hub to other use cases such as progress tracking, BIM issue management, and multidisciplinary coordination.

Towards Sustainable and Coherent Digitalisation

The biggest challenge for a company like McLaren? Ensuring data consistency, avoiding redundant data entry, and reusing existing information throughout the company’s digital ecosystem.

Thanks to Cooperlink, this challenge has been met: “Data is entered once and reused correctly everywhere,” concludes Tom Gothard.

There are no longer any information silos between tools. Whether in the office or on site, teams now always have access to the latest version of the documents.

Together with Cooperlink, Tom Gothard is proud to have achieved this goal.

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