Multidisciplinary design optimisation (MDO) can yield an optimal design considering all the disciplinary requirements concurrently. A method to implement the collaborative optimisation (CO) approach, one of the MDO methodologies, is developed using a pre-compiler 'EzPreCompiler", a design optimisation library "EzOptimizer", and a common object request broker architecture (CORBA) in distributed computing environment. The optimisation processes are performed at both system and discipline levels, where the design sensitivity at optimum in one level can be utilised for the initial design gradients in alternate level optimisation. The CO approach is applied to a mathematical example to show its applicability and equivalence to standard optimisation (SO) formulation. In a realistic engineering problem such as initial design of a bulk carrier, the CO yields better results than the SO due to the additional variables. Furthermore, the CO allows the distributed processing using the CORBA, which leads to the significant reduction of overall computation time.