Cadweb’s assertion, made in a press release dated 11 March on its website, is based on a Barbour Index survey reported in the Barbour Report 2003. It asked 322 construction clients how they exchanged information on projects: 96% use email and 13% use project extranets (with some using both).
“We believe Cadweb has completely misrepresented Barbour’s figures,” says Smith. “When clients mentioned which systems they were using, more than half were listed as ‘other/don’t know’. The Cadweb claim is therefore based on less than 6% of the total sample – only about 19 responses – and, even then, some of these clients probably confused Cadweb with CAD systems.”
Smith points out that Cadweb’s own website undermines its claims to have the largest market share. “It states that they are currently working on 155 projects. BIW has more than ten times that number, and several other competitors also have substantially more than Cadweb.”
Independent research by e-consultancy Compagnia in June 2003 also showed BIW as the market leader with 26.4% of the UK market, the largest user group and the highest user rating among the pure collaboration providers. Cadweb, by contrast, was dismissed as the ‘the wooden spoon’.
“I would agree with Francis Newman, Cadweb’s sales and marketing director, on one statement,” says Smith. “He claims ‘There is a large discrepancy between the usage figures of Cadweb and the competition.’ This is true, but not in the way Francis intends: there is a big discrepancy only because Cadweb is so far behind! If Cadweb is, as he claims, pulling away from the competition, then they must be either going backwards or heading in a different direction to the rest of us.”
Use of collaboration accelerating
The pace of adoption of collaboration technology shows no sign of slowing down, according to the latest figures from BIW. Its latest analysis shows that more than half a million documents and drawings were published to its BIW Information Channel collaboration service in the 12 months up to 31 March 2004 – a 50% increase on the previous year’s total.
The past year has seen BIW users publish more than 335,000 drawings and 191,000 documents (excluding comments, requests for information (RFIs), instructions, transmittals and other process- and system-generated items) – up from 223,000 and 127,000 in the year to 31 March 2003.
In the latest 12-month period, there were over 1.7 million log-ins to the system (up from 1.35 million the previous year); during the same time span, BIW added 8650 users and 780 companies to its user base, and 580 new projects.
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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 31 March 2004, the total number of BIW Information Channel users had reached 32,158, from 3493 different companies. Collectively, these users had logged in over 4,426,000 times, to work on 1750 projects with a total capital value estimated at around £14 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’s figures are based purely on drawings and documents submitted to its system, not on the number of people on a distribution list. Once a drawing or document is published it is immediately available to other team members for viewing and comment.
- At the end of January 2004, the BIW system was using 828 Gbytes for project-related data and was growing at the rate of 10-12% per month.
- BIW and BIW Information Channel are registered trademarks or trademarks of BIW Technologies Ltd.
