“In our sixth consecutive year of growth, turnover increased to £4.6 million in the year to 30 September 2006, up from £4m in 2005,” says Smith. “While at least one of our competitors has seen turnover drop, we have continued to win large numbers of new projects and major corporate deals – we now have an order book worth about £8.2 million in future revenues. With such figures, I believe BIW remains the UK market leader in construction collaboration by some distance.”

To date in 2006, BIW has signed major deals with developer Dandara and contractor Fitzpatrick, among others. The year has also seen several landmarks in the use of BIW Information Channel, confirming the upward trend:

• In June, the total number of published documents (typically Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, etc) passed the one million mark
• In August, the total number of original CAD files published to the BIW system since 1999 passed the two million mark. If piled on top of each other, along with an average eight copies per original, the pile of drawings would be over 2,000m high
• Also during August, the BIW system logged its ten millionth user session since 1999

By the end of September, the system had already recorded two million logins for 2006 – beating BIW’s previous record annual total with three months to spare – and had already registered more documents, more drawings, more new users and more new organisations than it did in the whole of 2005.

In the 12 months ending 30 September 2006, BIW recorded:

• 2.57 million logins (up 29 per cent on the 2005 performance)
• 17,279 new users (up 51 per cent), and
• 1,712 new user organisations (up 61 per cent).

During the same period, users published 571,000 CAD drawings (a 30 per cent increase on the preceding year), and 351,000 Word files, Excel spreadsheets, photographs and other documents (an increase of 51 per cent; this figure excludes items generated within the BIW system such as change orders, requests for information (RFIs), instructions, comments, etc).

At 30 September, the total registered user community stood at 66,104 individual users, from 6,829 different organisations.

“On current projections, we expect our total user community will have grown by over 30 per cent during 2006,” says Smith. “We also expect to maintain strong growth in 2007 as users of our new applications come on stream, and as we expand into new markets.”

To date BIW Information Channel had been deployed on over 4,900 projects or programmes of work, with an estimated total capital value of around £25 billion (adding individual schemes within multi-project programmes would increase the total by around 2,500 projects to at least 7,400 schemes).

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More information from:

• Paul Wilkinson, BIW head of corporate communications – 01483 712620 or mobile 07788 445920, email paul.wilkinson@biwtech.com

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.
• BIW customers include United Utilities, Sainsbury’s, BAA, Crest Nicholson, Marks & Spencer, the Ministry of Defence, the Wellcome Trust, Mace, Bovis Lend Lease, Fitzpatrick, Kajima, Gleeds, Canary Wharf Contractors and developers Land Securities, Ballymore, Garbe and Dandara.
• BIW’s figures are based purely on drawings and other items published once to its system, not on the number of people on a distribution list. Once a drawing, for example, is published it is counted once only; on average a drawing will be issued to around eight recipients. BIW also separates out process-generated items (eg: comments, requests for information, instructions, transmittals, etc) – up to 31 August 2006, over seven million of these had been generated.
• BIW and BIW Information Channel are registered trademarks or trademarks of BIW Technologies Ltd.