Steelbiz Direct

SCI has a membership in excess of 400 companies and individuals and is the leading
independent provider of technical expertise and disseminator of best practice to the steel
construction sector. To facilitate this activity SCI developed Steelbiz at the start of this
millennium, an (at the time) innovative on-line technical information system for use of the UK
construction industry with the aid of UK government funding. The relevance of this initiative
is even greater today than it was, with industry switching from hard copy information and
growing demand for a wider volume and variety of information provided electronically and
available on an ever increasing number of platforms and utilisable in a variety of ways. For
the construction industry this changing need for how information is presented is compounded
by the need to adopt Eurocodes. The on-going migration to these pan European design
standards, which are replacing the former BS documents, is presenting industry with an
unprecedented need for readily accessible information and advice.
Discussions with our members over the past two years have revealed that whilst Steelbiz
contains an ever expanding body of useful information from technical publications through to
advisory notes and guidance for specific engineering problems, amounting to over 5000
individual items, users would like to be able to manage and have available exactly what they
want, where they want it.
The aim of this project is to use our expertise in engineering and software to explore with our
members innovative options for on demand, managed information provision. The project will
provide quality assured information from Steelbiz and present it directly to users in a range of
ways. These could include pushing requested information directly to member company
intranets, and to mobile devices such as phones and tablets.