The UK's first construction portal

The origins of BIW date back to the 1980s when one of BIW’s founders began promoting the idea of an online construction service for design and procurement. George Stevenson started a specialist software developer, Engineering Technology, and in 1994 secured UK Department of the Environment support for a research project that became the Building Information Warehouse – probably the UK construction industry's first portal – launched in early 1995.

Promoting collaborative working

Simultaneously during the late 1990s, the company began to develop the first elements of an innovative web-based communications platform for the construction industry. Construction is heavily information-dependant. Sharing accurate, up-to-date information is critical for all participants in a construction project. Wasted time and cost can almost always be traced back to poor co-ordination caused by inaccurate, inadequate or inconsistent information - sometimes a combination of all three!

BIW developed its technology over five years, partly in response to UK construction industry reports calling for totally new ways of doing things. First, Sir Michael Latham’s report Constructing the Team (1994) advocated partnering approaches for construction projects. Then, Sir John Egan’s report Rethinking Construction (1998) called for an integrated project process.
 
With backing – most importantly – from forward-looking construction clients, consultants and contractors, BIW people began developing its technology. Moreover, it aimed to develop a 'whole life' system that could assist a facility's owner or operator beyond the design and construction phases. BIW recognised that owners/operators and their successors needed accumulated information or knowledge to be maintained and improved, so that they could operate and maintain the facility more efficiently.