BIW TECHNOLOGIES PROVIDES COLLABORATION TECHNOLOGY TO WELLCOME TRUST PROJECT

08 October 2001
 
BIW Technologies (BIW), is providing its web-based BIW Information Channel collaboration service to the team managing the ‘Cornerstone’ headquarters project for the medical charity, The Wellcome Trust.

Architect Michael Hopkins and Partners has designed the Trust’s new 28,000m2 headquarters building. Six hundred staff currently based in several separate London buildings will be co-located in the new development on a site bounded by Euston Road, Gower Street and Gower Place. The new building will incorporate an entrance to Euston Square Underground station. Along Euston Road the building will reach up to ten storeys, while the Gower Place frontage will be six storeys tall.

Construction, managed by Mace, started in March 2001 and the project should be completed in 2004. The project team also includes Cundall Johnston & Partners, Turner & Townsend and WSP. Over 1000 drawings and other documents have already been exchanged using the service.

“Our system is helping the client and the rest of the team collaborate during the ongoing design and construction work,” says BIW chief executive Colin Smith. “Once its building is complete, the Trust will then be able to access all the information accumulated during the build phase for use in future operation and maintenance.”

BIW is the UK market leader in collaboration systems for the construction and property industries. Its supply chain management service, BIW Information Channel, is already extensively used in the UK, with (at 27 September 2001) 8701 users in 1328 companies working on some 400 projects worth a total of over £3.6bn. The service makes project data available to every team member, through unique, project-specific websites. Users can create, and have access to, information including drawings, photographs, comments, team member details and even virtual reality renditions, all viewed and sent securely over the internet.

More information from:

• Paul Wilkinson, BIW Technologies - 0845 1300 800 (mobile 07788 445920)
• Barry Gardner, Wellcome Trust Press Office - 020 7611 8612

Notes to editors:

• Project collaboration systems from BIW Technologies (BIW®, www.biwtech.com) were first employed in 1998 on UK construction projects for Sainsbury and BAA. The customer list now includes Capital One Bank, Crest Nicholson, Marks & Spencer, Manchester Airport, Ikea, the Welsh Development Agency, and Asda. As the technology is adopted by each client’s supply chain, the user base for the BIW Information Channel™ collaboration system has grown rapidly.
• BIW Information Channel is a sophisticated web-based supply chain integration technology, originally designed specifically for construction projects. Each client is provided with a unique, project-specific website created around a knowledge database. Using this, all data can be made available to every project team member – from the earliest concepts and specifications, through detailed design, buildability studies, pre-fabrication, construction, maintenance, operation and improvement, to the eventual demolition or dismantling of the facility.
• The Wellcome Trust (www.wellcome.ac.uk) is one of the world’s largest medical research charities with an annual spend of £600 million. The Wellcome Trust supports more than 3,000 researchers, at 300 locations, in 30 different countries - laying the foundations for healthcare advances and helping to maintain the UK’s reputation as one of the world’s leading scientific nations. As well as funding major initiatives in the public understanding of science, the Wellcome Trust is the country’s leading supporter of research into the history of medicine.