HDR and Mott MacDonald Win 2024 Going Digital Award for Enterprise Engineering

Ontario Line Digital Delivery Strategy Honored for Driving Project Delivery Efficiencies and Collaboration 

A team of digital delivery leaders and experts from HDR and Mott MacDonald have won a 2024 Going Digital Award for Enterprise Engineering, presented by Bentley Systems. The team was honored for its work on Metrolinx’s Ontario Line, a nearly 16-kilometer subway through downtown Toronto. The Ontario Line project was selected from hundreds of nominations submitted by organizations in 36 countries.

The Ontario Line is a CA$27 billion megaprogram involving 28 separate but interrelated contracts, delivered through multiple contract approaches. With more than 19,000 design deliverables already issued, efficient information sharing, particularly across contract interfaces, is crucial to staying on schedule. Mott MacDonald and HDR developed a comprehensive digital delivery strategy to improve information sharing across a multi-team program. 

The common data environment that was established allowed organizations to access the right information at the right time, improving early engagement and communication among the thousands of individuals working on the program. Custom dashboards helped senior leadership track user access and project progress. And by integrating digital models, construction logic and scheduling, the project team produced weekly updated 4D models that were available to the entire project team. 

“Through embracing advanced digital strategies, programs like this are enabling our clients to achieve new levels of efficiency and collaboration” said Cameron Schaefer, HDR’s transportation digital delivery and data acquisition director. “This award showcases the collaborative spirit of our team and its industry-leading digital partnership. Using top talent from multiple organizations, we’re delivering a world-class project and enabling exciting new digital capabilities for Metrolinx.” 

“This project has demonstrated the value of a digital approach. Consistent data creation and sharing drives collaboration,” said Michael Gaunt, Mott MacDonald’s North American digital implementation lead. “Establishing foundational data management principles early on provides the right information to the right people during delivery and creates opportunities to scale the value of this data through future approaches like digital twins.”

The team accepted the award Oct. 9, 2024, at Bentley's Year in Infrastructure event in Vancouver.