The paper addresses system modelling and engineering in cooperative distributed environments. Multi-agent systems, ontologies and web technologies are used for the support and management of resources in a distributed virtual environment. Distributed design involves dispersed heterogeneous teams of people who have to establish and maintain an efficient cooperation process in order to reach global ?optimal? solutions to various problems. Key needs addressed by the introduced multi-agent system refer to interoperation among distributed resources and knowledge sharing, reuse and integration. An ontology library creates a common shared understanding of the domain for interoperating agents. The proposed system employs agents for information storage and retrieval, for enhancing collaboration within a distributed design environment and for providing a suitable interface to the user. The agents offer content-related support to the user by committing to the same library of ontologies. The proposed multi-agent design information management system aims to facilitate the optimization of the solution space of the collective dispersed design team.