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During 2001 it became clear to Bob
that these applications had a far greater market potential
outside of these traditional markets. In particular
in the FM (facilities management) area, which embraces
all market sectors.
At this time Bob renewed his relationship
with George Stevenson who was working in a similar market.
activeplan was born.
As it was realised the key to growth laid in the delivery
of these system across the web offering far greater
accessibility and usage of the systems within the user
base, Tim Aikin, one of the leading designers in the
UK at this time, was asked to join and develop this
integrated environment with Bob concentrating on the
Desktop and graphical integration issues.
The rest as they say is history with
the development and release of the state of the art
and market leading system activeplan.
George is an IT professional whose early career was
with Xerox on business systems and document control
and BT as a general manager in the 1980's leading a
pioneering online construction venture with the predecessor
of the Internet.
As a software entrepreneur, he has been driven by a
desire to automate the flow of information between software
applications used by the various disciplines and he
has an unusually wide range of experienced, starting
with the development of applications for M&E estimating
and maintenance in the early 1980's, through CAD and
building modelling in the 1990's to development of the
UK's most widely used Internet based project collaboration
systems, the BIW Information Channel.
Since then, he has worked with other construction industry
software developers to improve the exchange of data
between software applications has been actively involved
in the major industry initiatives to improve information
management for over ten years; a founder member of Construct
IT and the International Standards body, the IAI, a
member of the Salford University/BAA led team that designed
the Generic Design & Construction Project Process
Protocol, Chairman of the IT Working Group for Be (formerly
Design+Build Foundation) and is currently an advisor
to the UK government sponsored Strategic Forum on Construction,
on IT to support collaborative working.
Apart from activeplan,
George is also Director of Research for BIW Technologies
Ltd, which he co-founded in 2000, now the UK's largest
web-based collaboration service provider with clients
such as J Sainsbury, Marks & Spencer, British Land,
Land Securities, Manchester Airport, United Utilities,
Capital One, Crest Nicholson, MOD, Bovis Lendlease,
Kajima Corporation, Gleeds, MACE, Interior, Symonds/Woolf.
Tim became a professional web applications
developer after 10 years practice as an architect within
UK construction.
Tim first got involved with computing
in a serious way when he worked with Bob Poulter in
Hong Kong in early 1990’s where they produced added
value products for building modelling and document management
systems throughout the Far East based, in part, on the
core applications George Stevenson’s Engineering
Technology was developing in the UK.
In 1993 returned to the UK and joined
George at Engineering Technology working on building
modelling applications which led into the creation of
UK’s first construction portal the Building Information
Warehouse, biw.co.uk in 1995 when Internet technology
was in its infancy.
In 1996 Tim and George started developing
the UK’s first web-based project extranet from
first principles, evolving into the Information Channel,
now the UK’s most widely used Project Extranet.
Tim was also the architect for the
Information Channel Standards, which reinforced the
service as a Client-centric suite of knowledge based
information of property assets for construction projects.
When BIW became a separate company
in 2000, Tim continued to contribute his drive, imagination
and expertise as head of research. He developed the
information channel into a product surpassing it’s
competitors in it’s emphasis as a tool to manage
supply chains for Building Clients on construction projects.
At the start of 2002, Tim helped establish
activeplan to complement
the success of the Project Extranet, but take it onto
the next dimension and develop solutions that extract
data from the project documents and create an interactive
Building Model that can be used to avoid co-ordination
problems, provide area-specific lists of materials for
logistics and provide an interactive browser-based FM
application to run and operate the building or portfolios
of buildings.
Tim maintains his interest in
Architecture, which helps retain a perspective of the
professions that work for property owners and has a
personal web site at http://www.timaikin.com
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