BIW LAUNCHES WEB-BASED PROJECT CONTROL APPLICATION THROUGHOUT NORTH AMERICA

30 November 2009

BIW Technologies chief executive officer Colin Smith has announced the opening of BIW's North American hosting facilities to provide local support for its rapidly expanding user base across the USA, Canada and the Caribbean islands. Services will be delivered through a partnership arrangement with Sage Construction & Real Estate Solutions (Sage CRE).

Colin Smith says:

"Increasingly, customers are looking for platforms that will bring efficiency improvements to their project operations, better integrate their teams and provide real-time visibility on the health of their projects.  In addition, there is a growing demand for a system that provides a high quality of service: customers are fed up with unreliable systems.

"Operating BIW's web-based project management suite from a North American infrastructure, managed 24 hours a day, provides a compelling proposition for customers across the market.  BIW's applications are already used by hundreds of thousands of users in the worldwide engineering & construction (E&C) sector, but now that we are integrating our SaaS applications with Sage CRE's market-leading systems, our potential clients in North America for the first time will be able to source this type of solution from a truly world-class software company.

"We believe that many larger organisations, particularly in North America, have been waiting for such a shift in the marketplace - giving them the confidence to standardise on a system that is the clear market-leader."

Sage CRE

BIW's North American initiative is delivered through a partnership arrangement with Sage Construction & Real Estate Solutions (Sage CRE), whose senior vice president and general manager, John Geffel, says:

"Sage CRE has a strong leadership position in North America with its award-winning project management products, but we identified a growing demand for more Web-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions.

"Our new product offering, Sage Project Lifecycle Management (PLM) was developed through a partnership with BIW® Technologies, a global leader in web-based business applications. BIW’s technology provides clients with innovative project management platforms that offer extensive financial and process control features.

"Through this partnership, Sage PLM can help the North American construction industry focus on increasing productivity, collaboration and accountability among all parties."

BIW's application suite readily adapts for deployment in one-off projects and programs of work in many different industries, including retail, real estate, utilities, finance, infrastructure, power, health and education.

- ENDS -

For further information please contact:

• Paul Wilkinson (pwcom.co.uk Ltd) Tel: +44  (0)20 8858 1104, mobile +44 (0)77 8844 5920, email paul.wilkinson@pwcom.co.uk
• Colin Smith (BIW CEO) Tel: +44 (0)1483 712620

Notes to Editors

BIW Technologies:

• Project collaboration services from BIW Technologies (www.biwtech.com) were first employed in 1999 on European construction projects for major retailer Sainsbury's. BIW 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.
• The BIW platform 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.
• BIW customers include leading UK companies such as Bovis Lend Lease, Sainsbury's, Mace, Crest Nicholson, Canary Wharf, The Resort Group, The Wellcome Trust and the Coal Authority.
• BIW is a registered trademark of BIW Technologies Ltd.

Sage CRE:

• Sage (www.sagecre.com), the construction and real estate division of The Sage Group plc, offers a complete range of solutions to fit the building lifecycle, from new construction and subcontracting to property management, backed by more than 30 years of experience and award-winning support. Its other construction software solutions include applications for accounting, estimating and procurement.