In January 2011 the NEC appointed BIW Technologies as an NEC3 Licensed Content Partner. On the 24th August 2011 BIW launched its brand new version of its NEC Contracts Management solution, incorporating NEC3 content licensed by NEC Contracts.

Across the construction and engineering industry, the NEC suite of contracts is designed to help clients and their delivery partners to deliver capital projects and programmes in a more collaborative and less adversarial fashion. Gaining the maximum benefit from implementing the NEC should therefore be a critical objective for all parties.

BIW Technologies has already worked hand-in-hand with early adoptors of the NEC suite of contracts to design a software package, able to significantly reduce administrative costs and provide real-time financial reporting on key project indicators.Our detailed understanding of the NEC and its variants (ECC,PSC,TSC etc) for example, helped us to create a series of generic "NEC workflows" that, when applied in a logical sequence, can help you follow the correct process procedures and make use of the NEC easier.

Over the past four years, BIW has been helping clients to improve the management of NEC through its Contracts Management application. To date more than 70 projects and programmes have successfully deployed its solution across a range of NEC3 Works and Services contracts. The benefits of using BIW's NEC Contracts Management include:

• full integration - between contract variations during project lifecycle; i.e. ECC and ECSC
• reduced paperwork - leading to significant administration savings
• easier referencing to the contract - a single source of reference for all contract data, with a full audit trail of all contract-related communications
• better control over information flows - integration of contract processes and project data gives context-specific background to all decisions
• visibility of the consequences of change - project, contract and commercial managers can rapidly ascertain the latest situation
• identified, logged and managed risk registers - freeing up costly project management time               

Supporting all forms of contract for NEC3, BIW has embedded contract clauses, guidance notes and flowcharts into its NEC3 Contracts Management application, making it the most comprehensive system available to manage NEC contracts including: ECC, ECSC, PSC and TSC.

The system’s ability to integrate all variations of the NEC within a single project, and interlink upstream and downstream communications, means that customers can now achieve greater compliance with the key principles of the specified contract. Customer’s implemented processes can now be completely dovetailed with a detailed understanding on how to use specific contract clauses. With this integrated approach optimised, embedded and underpinned by BIW’s software platform.

On 24th August 2011, BIW’s CEO Colin Smith said “We’re pleased to expand our NEC Contract Management application with official NEC3 Content.” 

He added: “During the last four years BIW has helped clients and project teams to successfully deliver over £3bn worth of NEC works for the 2012 London Olympics and other prestigious UK projects. The new enhancements will only add further value to our NEC users, improving adherence with this highly successful form of contract."

Customer comments:

"Driving improvement through disciplined workflow and communications lies at the very heart of the NEC ethos. BIW has ensured that we fulfil these objectives without an additional administrative burden. Put simply,BIW is our administration and the source of our NEC reporting requirements.”

Chris Scott — Portfolio Manager, Promanex

“We have found the module to be very effective in administering the ECC contract. Having the processes of the contract associated to each other makes it simple to track a change from Early Warning through to Compensation Event and Implementation. The function to automatically generate Risk registers from Early Warning is also a very useful tool and reduces our administration.”

Graham Clarkson — Managing Director, The Clarkson Alliance

"I use BIW's project control platform across a wide range of our projects. I would recommend that anyone working with NEC adopts the use of BIW's solutions."

Mark Reid - Operations Director, Mace