This paper presents the technical solutions and methodologies that are used and under development for managing the design lifecycle of the WEST project (W – for tungsten – Environment in Steady-state Tokamak, upgrade of Tore Supra's with actively cooled tungsten plasma facing components) fusion components and explains the interfaces that are implemented or in construction to connect together the different tools like documents management system, CAD modeler, or simulation codes around the data management backbone. It describes the methodologies used on the WEST project to optimize the design process by managing the engineering data workflow and ensuring the consistency between the different 3D representations for design or analysis as well as the specification or interfaces documents. Finally it explains how this platform contributes to reach the project targets in terms of performance, cost and schedule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]