BIW Technologies

Enhancement of Construction Collaboration and Viewing Application at BIW Technologies, UK

The Business Challenge

BIW Technologies Ltd provides supply chain integration services to the global AEC (architectural, engineering and construction) community. A leading application service provider (ASP), it deploys, hosts and manages access to software applications from a centrally managed facility. The core requirement that BIW wanted to meet was the need of enhancing their existing legacy viewer and integrating it to their existing web based project management tool for communication and collaboration of project related tasks and documents. The view and annotation tool would typically read project documents associated and place your communication remarks using textual and graphical annotations integrated with the viewer tool. The customized viewer needed to suit the regional audience. Moreover, the application being internet-based, maintenance of security of the content was of utmost importance.

Some of the main challenges were:

• Dispersed environment
• Already developed legacy viewing application was being used in the applications provided by BIW technologies. The applications were to be enhanced using Web4’s viewing technology
• Need to add support for more formats such as DWF, PCL and PDF in the existing viewing application. Web4’s expertise in viewing hundreds of formats is being applied in BIW technologies’ Information Channel application
• A tighter integration with BIW technologies’ Information Channel application
• bulletSubsequently use Web4’s eReview technology to provide seamless viewing and collaboration in the applications provided by BIW technologies
• Flexibility of customization to suit the regional audience
• Security of the content: Since the primary users of BIW Technologies are using their applicationsm from the Internet, the security was of primary importance
• Need for online collaboration

The Solution

Users of BIW Technologies’ applications, now can not only view and annotate hundreds of file formats natively, but also can collaborate on the documents over the Internet. Some of the main advantages that BIW Technologies’ users get from the combined solution are:

• View and Annotate documents that are stored in a secured document repository
• Totally web-based solution with no client installations. This is in lines with the overall business strategy of BIW Technologies.
• An affordable solution: Only Internet connection and web-browser needed
• Drawing on Web4’s expertise in developing eReview, future releases of BIW’s visual interface will support a wider range of file formats, deliver new online meeting, chat and messaging features, and incorporate advanced voice and video technologies
• End-users are able to collaborate in real-time, using co-view, co-markup and conferencing features; such ‘design review meetings’ are also capable of being saved, replayed and archived into BIW Information Channel’s work environment
• Reduce cost of transferring information – online transfer and meetings through Internet
• Reduce errors – easy to check latest information
• Increase accountability – document control and task follow-up
• Achieve Better quality through alignment of processes