Colin Smith, chief executive of BIW Technologies (BIW), has contested assertions made by Tom Dengenis, CEO of Asite plc, in ‘Building’ magazine on 16 July 2004.
An article, “Asite faces ‘passing off’ claim from software rival,” reported that BIW was considering legal action against Asite over similarities between the two companies’ software products. It also reported BIW’s concerns about a case study in which Asite misleadingly claimed credit for achievements made using BIW Information Channel.
Responding to these points, Dengenis stated: “We never saw their application; we only had access to the public websites. There was no chance to reverse engineer their software.” He also countered the ‘passing off’ allegation by saying that Asite’s collaboration services were much more than just its software product.
On 21 July, Colin Smith wrote to ‘Building’ magazine:
"It beggars belief that Mr Dengenis could have stated that “we never saw their application; we only had access to the public websites” and that “there was no chance to reverse engineer their software”. It is a matter of public record that Asite operated as a reseller of BIW Information Channel collaboration software for three whole years - during which their staff had full access to all aspects of our system to provide consultancy and help-desk services to end-users.
"With regard to our concerns about passing-off, Asite’s case study on 95 Queen Victoria Street states that savings of £231k were due to “collaboration software provided by Asite” and makes no mention of the fact that the software in question was BIW Information Channel. Many similarly misleading points are made in the same case study including statements such as “this was one of the main benefits of using Asite Collaboration” and “Asite Collaboration was voted top added-value tool”. The reader is clearly being led to believe that Asite’s own collaboration software has been used successfully - where it has not. I do not understand how Mr Dengenis can deny that this is misleading and maintain a clear conscience.
"Yours faithfully, etc"
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Notes to editors:
- Project collaboration services from BIW Technologies (www.biwtech.com) were first employed in 1999 on UK construction projects for Sainsbury’s. BIW believes it is the European leader in web-based collaboration systems for the construction and property industry, measured by numbers of users, usage and volume of data.
- BIW Information Channel is a sophisticated web-based supply chain integration technology, designed specifically for construction projects or programmes. Each client is provided with a unique, project or programme-specific website created around a knowledge database. With this, data can be made available securely to every team member – from the earliest concepts, through detailed design, buildability studies, pre-fabrication, construction, maintenance, operation and improvement to the eventual demolition or dismantling of the facility.
- At 30 June 2004, the total number of BIW Information Channel users had reached 34,517, from 3747 different companies. Collectively, these users had logged in five million times, to work on around 2000 projects with a total capital value estimated at around £15 billion.
- BIW customers include United Utilities, Sainsbury’s, BAA, housebuilders Crest Nicholson and the Peabody Trust, Marks & Spencer, the Ministry of Defence, the Wellcome Trust, O2, Mace, Bovis Lend Lease, Kajima, Gleeds and developers Stanhope, Land Securities and Garbe.
- BIW and BIW Information Channel are registered trademarks or trademarks of BIW Technologies Ltd.
- Asite operated as a reseller of BIW Information Channel from April 2001. In November that year, BIW withdrew Asite’s reseller status, citing concerns about Asite’s product-bundling policies and poor product support. The status was reinstated in February 2002, but the arrangement was eventually dissolved in early 2004 amid BIW concerns that Asite was abusing its reseller agreement and developing its own directly competing application.
