Consolidation and growth

By September 2004, BIW was hosting more than one million CAD drawing files. By publishing their CAD files once to BIW and letting the system notify recipients of their availability, our users had immediately removed over eight million copies from alternative distribution channels. In terms of the sheer extent of its use, BIW remained the clear UK market leader.

This year also saw us outgrow both our offices. In January 2005, we relocated our head office from central London to Woking, Surrey, and in November our regional office in Nottingham moved to new, larger facilities.

In between these developments, BIW was shortlisted in the Building Awards Entrepreneur of the Year category, we delivered the first courses on construction collaboration in Ireland, and (in September 2005), announced the publication of the world's first dedicated guide to the technologies.

By the end of 2005, our user community had grown to over 52,000. Collectively, these people had used the solution on 3,600 projects or programmes of work, conservatively estimated at around £23 billion in total capital value.