House of Fraser, Britain's leading retailer of designer brands, has agreed a corporate deal with BIW Technologies to use BIW's web-based collaboration platform, BIW Information Channel, to streamline the design and construction of all its store projects, including new-build and refurbishment schemes.

It has also implemented BIW's corporate standards environment to manage standard elements across all its projects. Two major new stores, in High Wycombe and Belfast, have now reached detailed design stage using the standards technology as part of the solution.

House of Fraser senior project manager Paul Chidgey was instrumental in implementing the corporate standards platform: "In a special initiative, 'Project Rapier', we worked with our supply chains to analyse all the key elements of our store delivery processes," he says.

"Best practices regarding contractual procedures, design and specification of store fixtures and even use of the collaboration system itself have all been captured for future re-use. The system gives us greater flexibility - we can accommodate changes to retail layouts much later, for example - and we have also been able to negotiate lower fees with our designers. Suppliers are already submitting standard information for approval and we have already processed 580 drawings into the standards system."

"By streamlining design, procurement and construction processes and increasing standardisation, we aim to deliver House of Fraser stores of the same high quality, but at 20% less cost," adds Horrix.

To date BIW Information Channel had been deployed on over 4,900 projects or programmes of work, with an estimated total capital value of around £25 billion (adding individual schemes within multi-project programmes would increase the total by around 2,500 projects to at least 7,400 schemes).