The pace of adoption of collaboration technology shows no sign of slowing down, according to the latest figures from BIW Technologies. 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 30 June 2004 – a 37% increase on the previous year’s total. The system has also just recorded its five millionth user log-in.

The past year has seen BIW Information Channel users publish more than 355,000 drawings and 187,000 documents (excluding comments, requests for information (RFIs), instructions, transmittals and other process- and system-generated items) – up from 242,000 and 152,000 in the year to 30 June 2003. Over the past six months, an average of 30,000 drawings have been published to the system each month: that’s 1,000 every day.

In the latest 12-month period, there were over 1.8 million log-ins to the system (up from just under 1.5 million the previous year); BIW Information Channel now averages over 5,000 log-ins every day. Over the same 12-month span, BIW added 6500 users and 840 companies to its user base, and 620 new projects.

"At one time, sceptics were forecasting that the take-up of construction collaboration technologies would quickly begin to plateau, but this has certainly not been our experience,” says BIW Technologies chief executive Colin Smith.

“Indeed, as organisations have realised just how robust and reliable an externally-hosted service can be, we have seen continued growth in all our key measures. Most importantly, this has been achieved without any deterioration in our service levels: we have continued to maintain our minimum 99.8% service availability.”

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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’s figures are based purely on drawings or documents submitted to its system, not on the number of people on a distribution list. Once an item is published it is immediately available to other team members for viewing and comment.
• BIW and BIW Information Channel are registered trademarks or trademarks of BIW Technologies Ltd.