Sir

The article ‘Citadon set to spend £11m on development’ stated that Prudential Insurance is “a shareholder in BIW, a rival B2B project collaboration provider” (CJ 17 October).

This is not true. No part of the Prudential group (or affiliate or investment vehicle) has ever held any stake in BIW Technologies. Indeed, we believe it is important for a collaboration services provider to be independent of vested industry interests.

It is also inaccurate to suggest that BIW, among others, “started less than two years ago and are trying to catch up with the technology offered by Citadon”.

Why should someone want to use old technology developed in an American context? BIW’s collaboration system has been in use since 1998, and was developed specifically for use in the UK construction industry.

Far from trying to catch up, we sped past Bidcom long ago: in the past two years BIW has won more than twice as many projects as their 175, and hasn’t had to rely on shareholders to boost its numbers either.

Colin Smith
Chief executive
BIW Technologies