Ricardo, one of the world's leading independent engineering firms, has won two top awards for its use of the web.

The Shoreham-based company, working with global information and communications technology services group CMG, has won the Intranet/Extranet Project Award and the Knowledge Management Project Award at the prestigious Information Management Awards.

A panel of high-profile independent experts from different fields, including journalism, consultancy, academia and user associations, judged R-Link, a system jointly developed by Ricardo and CMG, to demonstrate the most innovative and successful use of web technology for managing corporate information.

The judges were particularly impressed by R-Link for the way it delivered significant and definable business benefits to Ricardo and its customers.

Ricardo IT director Chris Bates said: "The success of Ricardo is founded on its high-calibre people and their in-depth engineering expertise.

"R-Link's easy access and unique capability provides a valuable tool for the 1,400 highly- trained Ricardo engineers and technicians located across the world to communicate, collaborate and importantly share up-to-date information to provide our customers with innovative solutions.