Industry-tested and adopted

BAA's framework team at Gatwick used the BIW system to implement Egan's principles. Having tested the system on a pilot project, in 1999 Sainsbury's adopted BIW as its corporate standard for supply chain communication. Importantly, both organisations were developing supply chains based on collaboration.

In early 2000, the BIW SaaS technology began to be more aggressively marketed in the UK by a new BIW management team. In less than a year, the number of clients adopting the system grew more than twenty-fold.

Described by Construction Plus as 'the leading project collaboration tool currently in the UK', it was voted best project extranet solution at a Construction Plus conference in March 2001. A 'snapshot' review at the time showed over 4500 users in 750 companies using the system on over 300 UK projects, with a capital value of over £1.6bn.

Underlining the value of the technology to support partering-type projects, BIW was selected by Citex Prime Services to support its £41m Prime Contract at MOD Andover North. Partnering also places great emphasis on long-term strategic working, and in November, BIW announced a strategic partnership with Interior plc. In November, the total number of user sessions (logins) passed the one million mark. By the end of 2001, BIW's user base had grown to almost 11,000 users from 1600 companies, working on 554 projects worth an estimated total of £5bn.