Trimble and Bentley Alliance for Large Infrastructure Project Sites

Trimble Dimensions 2012 – Bentley Systems, Incorporated, the leading company dedicated to providing comprehensive software solutions for sustaining infrastructure, and Trimble (NASDAQ:TRMB), the leading provider of connected construction solutions for heavy, civil, and building contractors, today announced a strategic alliance to further the connection between the virtual and physical environments for infrastructure projects. This alliance will establish a new benchmark for construction and operations quality, efficiency, and safety. Working smarter, together, and employing advanced information mobility innovations, the exchange of physical and virtual data can now be more easily leveraged by engineers and contractors to reduce project risk while increasing overall productivity.

In the resulting immersive environment, physical and virtual information can be used to improve and validate on-site construction processes. The seamless exchange of information between the virtual and physical can be achieved by utilizing a selection of Trimble's field positioning technologies, such as robotic total stations, 3D laser scanners, and global navigation satellite system (GNSS) positioning solutions, and Bentley's information modeling software – with work sharing and dynamic feedback being securely managed in ProjectWise.

Trimble CEO Steve Berglund said, "Trimble's goal is to provide our users with world-class integrated positioning solutions that allow them to collect, manage, and analyze complex information faster and easier. Our collaboration with Bentley will provide engineers and contractors with greater insight into construction problems and enhanced positioning solutions. It will also enhance the application of the constructible model to bringing engineering and construction data to the field and back."

Bentley Systems CEO Greg Bentley said, "In working with Trimble, whose leading-edge technologies many of our major project delivery user organizations already rely upon, we together realized there's a combination of our offerings that can uniquely provide benefits to construction processes that neither could independently. In particular, through the intrinsic ‘geo-coordination' in Bentley's applications and ProjectWise geospatial services, almost every project's information modeling content is virtually positioned with engineering precision in the ‘project space.'

"Intelligent positioning now enables these engineering models to be real-time and real-place referenced, from and into mobile devices in the field, through immersive environments from both Bentley and Trimble. Users piloting the integration of physical positioning from Trimble with virtual positioning from Bentley, facilitated by information mobility innovations, have identified significant savings of time and money, and continue to uncover new benefit cases."

Read More

The Year in Infrastructure 2011 Edition Released by Bentley

Bentley shares the innovation in best practices among the infrastructure professionals who make these projects possible by featuring their outstanding achievements across the globe in The Year in Infrastructure series of publications.

Today, Bentley released The Year in Infrastructure 2011 Edition. It is immediately available at www.bentley.com/YearInInfrastructure.

This 240-page yearbook highlights the extraordinary work of Bentley users improving the world’s infrastructure. It features descriptions and color images of the more than 300 project nominations recognized and 20 winners honored at the 2011 Be Inspired Awards ceremony, held last month at Bentley’s Be Inspired: Thought Leadership in Infrastructure event in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Bentley’s Be Inspired Awards competition acknowledges outstanding achievement and innovation in infrastructure design, construction, and operations. The winners are selected by independent panels of expert jurors representing a broad range of infrastructure disciplines.

Read More

2011 Be Inspired Awards Competition Finalists Announced

Bentley Systems Incorporated, the leading company dedicated to providing comprehensive software solutions for sustaining infrastructure, today announced the project finalists in the 2011 Be Inspired Awards competition and the four winners of the 2011 Be Inspired Special Recognition Awards. The awards honor the extraordinary work of Bentley users improving and sustaining the world’s infrastructure. Five independent panels of jurors, comprising accomplished Bentley users and distinguished industry experts, selected the 59 finalists and the Special Recognition Awards candidates from nominations submitted by 270 organizations in 42 countries. The winners of the Be Inspired Awards will be announced at the invitation-only Be Inspired: Thought Leadership in Infrastructure event taking place Nov. 8-9, 2011, in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

“Our Be Inspired Awards program, which showcases excellence and innovation in the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure around the world, is celebrating its eighth year,” Bentley Systems COO Malcolm Walter said, “and I’m happy to report that we once again enjoyed record participation from our global community of users.”

He continued, “Our 59 finalists are stellar examples of the project and infrastructure performance improvements that are achievable when architects, engineers, builders, geospatial professionals, and owner-operators work smarter empowered by our portfolio of innovative information modeling software. The results are truly inspiring!”

Candidates for Bentley’s third annual Be Inspired Special Recognition Awards were placed into nomination by the jurors for their uniquely innovative and visionary achievements embracing multiple Be Inspired Awards categories. The nominees were then reviewed by a panel of Bentley executives. The achievements recognized by this year’s four awards are Attaining Return on Innovation, Sustaining Our Society, Sustaining Our Environment, and Sustaining the Professions.

Commenting on the 2011 Special Recognition Awards winners, Bentley Systems CEO Greg Bentley said, “In honoring these distinctive projects, we also highlight the virtuosity of the organizations that successfully delivered them. Each innovatively employed information modeling, collaboration, and best practices to advance Bentley’s mission of Sustaining Infrastructure. On behalf of my colleagues at Bentley, I congratulate this year’s Special Recognition Awards recipients and thank them for their accomplishments.”

The Be Inspired Special Recognition Awards winners for 2011 are as follows:

Attaining Return on Innovation

Cadre Design Group, Inc. – SFOBB East Span Seismic Safety Project – (San Francisco-Oakland, California, USA)

Sustaining Our Society

Secretaria de Finanzas del Distrito Federal – Programme for the Modernization of the Mexico City Cadastre – (Mexico City, Mexico)

Sustaining Our Environment

Shinryo Corporation – Shinryo Eco Renewal Project – (Tokyo, Japan)

Sustaining the Professions

GHD – (Melbourne, Australia)

The Be Inspired Awards finalists for 2011 are as follows:

Connecting Project Teams

AECOM – SH 161 Phase 4 – (Dallas, Texas, USA)
APIA XXI, S.A. – Connecting Project Teams on Two Continents – (Texas, USA, and Santander, Spain)
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power – LADWP ProjectWise Implementation – (Los Angeles, California, USA)

Innovation in Asset Lifecycle Information Management

Bristol Water plc – Enterprise Management of Street Works Noticing – (Bristol, United Kingdom)
Crossrail Ltd – Crossrail - Asset Information Management System – (London and South East England, United Kingdom)
Southern Company – Asset Management - ProjectWise Lifecycle Server – (Birmingham, Alabama, USA)

Innovation in Bridges

HDR, Inc. – Hoover Dam Bypass – (Mohave County, Arizona, and Clark County, Nevada, USA)
Hunan Provincial Communications Planning, Survey and Design Institute – Longyong Expressway Bridge Design – (Longshan County, Hunan Province, China)
Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development – I-10 Twin Spans Bridges – (Slidell and New Orleans, Louisiana, USA)

Innovation in Building

Foster + Partners – Scottish National Arena – (Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom)
UNStudio – EEA & Tax Offices – (Groningen, Netherlands)
Warren and Mahoney – The Rock, Wellington International Airport – (Wellington, New Zealand)

Innovation in Campuses, Airports, and Military Installations

Arup – Midfield Development Design Consultancy Services – (Hong Kong, China)
Hatch Associates Limited – QCLNG Upstream Surface Facilities – (Wandoan and Dalby, Queensland, Australia)
Samsung C&T Corporation/IDM E&C – Jeongok Marine Industrial Park – (Gyeonggi-do, South Korea)

Innovation in Communications Networks

Precision Contracting Services, Inc. – Martin County Community Broadband Network – (Martin County, Florida, USA)
Rainbow Design Services, Inc. – Disaster Assessment and Recovery Using Bentley Communications Products – (Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA)

Innovation in Construction

Grontmij – Norreport Station – (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Jacobs – Automating WorkFace Planning – (Corpus Christi, Texas, USA)
Matec Engenharia – Planning Innovation of a Medical Center – (São Paulo, Brazil)

Innovation in Generative Design

Arup – ArtScience Museum – (Singapore)
HOK and PLP Architecture – The Francis Crick Institute – (London, United Kingdom)
tvsdesign – Music City Center – (Nashville, Tennessee, USA)

Innovation in Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering

AECOM – A1 Dishforth to Leeming Improvement Scheme – (Leeming Bar, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom)
Jan De Nul NV – Panama Canal Expansion – (Panama City and Colon, Panama)
PT. Tigenco Graha Persada – Geotech Investigation Java South Line – (Cirebon - Prupuk, Purwokerto, Kroya, West, Central Java, Indonesia)

Innovation in Government

H. Ayuntamiento de Metepec – Cadastral and Geographic Information System (SICyG) – (Metepec, Mexico)
Port of Helsinki – Vuosaari Harbour Maintenance System – (Helsinki, Finland)
The City of Newcastle – City Precinct 3D Modeling – (Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia)

Innovation in Metals and Mining

AngloGold Ashanti Limited – Refurbishment of Savuka Shaft – (Carletonville, Gauteng, South Africa)
SEI Engenharia Ltda – Cristalino Project – (Canaã dos Carajás, Pará, Brazil)
T&G Corporation Pty Ltd – Crushing Plant – (North West Australia)

Innovation in Multimedia

i-TEN Associates – Point Cloud Visualizations – (Portland, Oregon, USA)
Larsen & Toubro Limited – Ammonia Synthesis Gas Generation Project – (Bharuch, Gujarat, India)
Washington State Department of Transportation, Visual Engineering Resource Group – SR 20 Sharpes Corner Vicinity - Interchange – (Anacortes, Washington, USA)

Innovation in Power Generation

Guangdong Electric Power Design Institute – Hongyan River Nuclear Power Plant – (Dalian, Liaoning, China)
HydroChina Zhongnan Engineering Corporation – Tuoba Hydro-Power Station – (Diqing, Yunan, China)
L&T-Sargent & Lundy Limited – 3x660 MW Supercritical Thermal Power Plant – (Nagpur, Maharashtra, India)

Innovation in Process Manufacturing

Chemical Construction International (P) Limited – Carotino Fatty Acid Splitting Plant – (Johar Baru, Central Jakarta, Indonesia)
Larsen & Toubro Limited – CO2 Recovery and Injection Project – (Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates)
Qatar Petroleum – Creation of Intelligent As-built Models of Offshore Facilities Using a Combination of Terrestrial Laser Scanning and Verified Existing Engineering Drawings – (Doha, Qatar)

Innovation in Rail and Transit

Hatch Mott MacDonald – Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension – (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)
Parsons Brinckerhoff – Glenfield Transport Interchange – (Glenfield, New South Wales, Australia)
RITES Ltd. – Mechi-Mahakali and Pokhara-Kathmandu Electric Railway – (Nepal)

Innovation in Roads

Beam, Longest and Neff, L.L.C. – I-69 at State Road 61/56 – (Pike County, Indiana, USA)
Engevix Engenharia S.A. – Santa Catarina 108 Highway – (Angelina and Major Gercino, Santa Catarina, Brazil)
Kokusai Kogyo Co., Ltd. – Figuring the Disaster Status From Mobile Mapping System (MMS) – (Japan)

Innovation in Structural Engineering

Chuchawal Royal Haskoning Co., Ltd. – Hygenic Flex Factory at Samutsakorn – (Samutsakorn, Thailand)
L&T MHI Boilers Pvt Ltd – 2x700 MW Rajpura Thermal Power Plant – (Rajpura, Punjab, India)
Stopford Projects Ltd – Tata Soda Ash Plant Winnington – (Winnington, Cheshire, United Kingdom)

Innovation in Utility Transmission and Distribution Networks

AES Torino S.p.A. – Large-Scale District Heating Preliminary Development Project – (Torino, Italy)
Central Southern China Electric Power Design Institute – Qingdao Converter Station – (Qingdao, Shandong, China)
ENMAX Power Corporation – A Case Study on Bentley Substation – (Calgary, Alberta, Canada)

Innovation in Water and Wastewater Treatment Plants

Arup – Sludge Treatment Facility Hong Kong – (Hong Kong, China)
CDM – Galveston Main Wastewater Treatment Plant – (Galveston, Texas, USA)
Gippsland Water – Gippsland Water Factory – (Maryvale, Victoria, Australia)

Innovation in Water, Wastewater, and Stormwater Networks

Barwon Region Water Corporation – Instant Access to Fire-Flow Results – (Geelong, Victoria, Australia)
General Directorate of Izmir Water and Wastewater Authority – IZSU Geographic Infrastructure Information System Project – (Izmir, Turkey)
SimTejo – Aquasafe - Smart Management System – (Lisbon, Portugal)

For more information about the 2011 Be Inspired finalists and Be Inspired Special Recognition Awards winners, visit www.bentley.com/BeInspiredAwards.

About Be Inspired: Thought Leadership in Infrastructure

The world’s leading practitioners will gather at Be Inspired, Bentley’s premier thought leadership and networking event, November 8-9, 2011, in Amsterdam, Netherlands. They will share the best practices behind the successful realization of their current projects and explore new ways to respond to the challenges driving today’s business. Also in attendance will be 80 journalists from around the world, who will additionally participate in a special media briefing on November 7.

Be Inspired is an intimate, invitation-only event that will feature presentations by the Be Inspired Awards finalists as well as executive roundtables focusing on critical issues in business, technology, and practice facing infrastructure professionals around the world. It will culminate with an awards ceremony recognizing outstanding achievement and innovation in infrastructure design, construction, and operations by winners selected from 59 project finalists by five independent panels of jurors. In total, nominations from 270 organizations in 42 countries were submitted in this year’s awards program.

This annual event provides a unique forum for senior-level executives to learn about the innovations driving the development and operations of the world’s top infrastructure projects. It also enables them to engage with other industry leaders in interactive discussions on topics of importance to the business of sustaining infrastructure. For additional information about the Be Inspired: Thought Leadership in Infrastructure event, visit www.bentley.com/BeInspired.

Read More

Universities in Brazil Joins Bentley’s Be Careers Network

Bentley Systems, Incorporated, the leading company dedicated to providing comprehensive software solutions for sustaining infrastructure, today announced that Federal University of São Carlos and Federal University of Rio de Janeiro have joined Bentley’s Be Careers Network. Through this innovative program, students and educators gain access to the same professional-grade software and training used by the world’s leading design and engineering firms. The Be Careers Network provides a cost-effective and comprehensive software suite encompassing the full range of infrastructure disciplines, blended learning that includes technology training via online learning, professional networking via the Be Communities networking site, scholarships, and much more.

Professor Guilherme A. Parsekian, Ph.D., coordinator of Civil Engineering Course, Federal University of São Carlos, said, “The partnership between Bentley and the Federal University of São Carlos allows our teaching staff and students to have direct contact with the latest commercial software tools. I believe that the use of such important technology during students’ academic years will have a positive impact on their professional futures.”

Federal University of São Carlos and Federal University of Rio de Janeiro join the growing list of prestigious universities in Brazil that have selected Be Careers Network to help their students graduate with the technology skills needed to start careers as infrastructure professionals in the architecture, engineering, geospatial, and construction fields. Others include:

University of São Paulo
State University of Campinas
UNESP – São Paulo State University
Presbyterian University of Mackenzie
Pontifical Catholic University
Air Force Technological Institute

Scott Lofgren, Bentley global director of Be Careers Network, said, “Engineering and architecture graduates with the skills needed to improve the infrastructure of Brazil are in huge demand, especially among the many leading Brazilian organizations using Bentley software, such as Petrobras, Engevix Engenharia, SEI Engenharia, INFRAERO, and Construções e Comércio Camargo Corrêa, to name only a few. A steady influx of new infrastructure professionals is crucial to support the continued expansion of this country’s burgeoning economy through the creation of roads, bridges, power plants, water distribution systems, and other infrastructure that sustains the economy and the environment. One of Bentley’s primary goals is to help countries like Brazil meet growing demand for better-performing infrastructure by helping sustain the infrastructure professions through its Be Careers Network.”

Lofgren continued, “Recently added features of our innovative program include the ability of students to earn Bentley Learning Units for their use of Bentley products within academic courses. These Learning Units will appear on their personal Bentley Professional Training Transcripts, which they can show to prospective employers once they graduate, enhancing their job prospects. And this past year, Bentley deployed its new STUDENTserver. Already gaining widespread acceptance on campuses around the globe, this new program offering assists students as well as faculty by providing for the online delivery of the Bentley software and training available to them through the Be Careers academic subscription. At the same time, it gives them the unique opportunity to network with infrastructure professionals through Bentley’s Be Communities social networking site. Both of these new offerings are available today to the numerous university students and faculty across Brazil who are actively engaged in our Be Careers Network.”

Professor Roberto Machado Corrêa, Ph.D., Graphic Expression Department, Civil Engineering Course, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, said, “This year, all of the classes on computational design at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro were taught using MicroStation, and the perceptions of the professors in the Graphic Expression Department regarding this software have been very positive. The 3D modeling is easy to use, and the overall experience led us to extend our use of the MicroStation platform to include other applications it supports.”

Read More

'The Year in Infrastructure 2009' yearbook - Free Download

Bentley Systems, Incorporated, the leading company dedicated to providing comprehensive software solutions for the infrastructure that sustains our world, today announced that the digital version of The Year in Infrastructure 2009 is immediately available here, and print copies are available upon request. This 200-page yearbook highlights the extraordinary work of Bentley users improving the world’s infrastructure and the quality of life for us all. It features descriptions and color images of the more than 250 project nominations recognized, 17 winners honored in the 2009 Be Inspired Awards competition, and four recipients of Be Inspired Special Recognition Awards. In addition, it provides links to special Be Connected online seminars presented by Be Inspired Award winners and finalists. Each seminar offers insight into the design innovations and best practices employed to achieve the outstanding results that placed these projects among the top choices of the Be Inspired Awards judges.

James H. McGraw IV, group publisher, McGraw-Hill Construction, said, “The projects that infrastructure professionals design and build are changing and improving the lives of people everywhere. I am truly amazed at the impact these projects have on communities. This work is enhancing the lives of millions, and we congratulate these architectural, engineering, construction, and geospatial professionals on their remarkable achievements.”

CEO Greg Bentley said, “The extraordinary projects in our Year in Infrastructure 2009, like those in previous editions, are testament to the imagination, innovation, and dedication our users demonstrate in accomplishing the crucial task of sustaining the world’s infrastructure. Through this publication, we proudly recognize and share these remarkable achievements, which combine higher-performing infrastructure and more cost-effective project realization, with business entities, government officials, industry organizations, and the media. We want the world to appreciate, as we do, the incredible value of our users’ work to our society, to our environment, and to our global economy.”

To request a print copy of The Year in Infrastructure 2009, visit www.bentley.com/2009Yearbook.

Read More

Be Inspired Special Recognition Awards Winners

Winners of Be Inspired Special Recognition Awards by Bentley were announced in a press release. The winners will be awarded next week during its Be Inspired: Infrastructure Best Practices Symposium and Awards in Charlotte, N.C. The awards honor outstanding achievements in infrastructure and are judged by an independent panel of industry experts.

The winners of these awards are uniquely innovative and visionary infrastructure projects and organizations that were placed into nomination by the Be Inspired jurors for achievements embracing multiple Be Inspired Awards categories. The nominees were then reviewed by a panel consisting of Bentley Systems CEO Greg Bentley, CTO and founder Keith Bentley, COO Malcolm Walter, SVP Bhupinder Singh, SVP Buddy Cleveland, and Jay McGraw, Group Publisher, McGraw-Hill Construction. The achievements being recognized include: Attaining Return on Innovation, Sustaining Our Society, Sustaining Our Environment, and Sustaining the Professions.

The winners of the 2009 Be Inspired Special Recognition Awards are as follows:

- Attaining Return on Innovation – KBR/EOS Oil & Gas Services Joint Venture, the North Rankin Redevelopment Project. The project best represents innovation in the use of technology and creative workflows to create value and deliver better-performing infrastructure with quantifiable results.

- Sustaining Our Society – Hatch Associates Pty Ltd, Adelaide Desalination Project. The project best demonstrates the power of infrastructure to benefit society by improving quality of life, promoting economic development, and increasing resilience against natural disasters or climate change.

- Sustaining Our Environment – Olsson Associates, Antelope Valley. The project best illustrates how an infrastructure project can help reduce ecological footprint, increase biocapacity, and facilitate the wise use of nonrenewable resources.

- Sustaining the Professions – Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB). This organization has demonstrated an exemplary commitment to sustaining the infrastructure professions through continuous learning, professional development, mentoring the next generation of infrastructure professionals, and providing an exceptional environment for learning.

Read More

Bentley V8i Software Portfolio for Infrastructure Professionals

Bentley Systems, Incorporated today announced V8i, the most comprehensive software portfolio for infrastructure ever assembled in a single release. Encompassing products for all of the solution communities served by Bentley, the V8i portfolio leverages and extends core capabilities of its new interoperability platform to provide the breadth and depth of technology needed for fully integrated project delivery. V8i’s interoperability platform enables Bentley applications to persist, share, and visualize infrastructure asset data in a common way, promoting collaborative workflows. The result is a project environment that combines flexibility, scalability, and robustness, and a portfolio that offers engineers, architects, GIS professionals, constructors, and owner-operators unprecedented choices across discipline-specific integrated software and services incorporated in Bentley solutions. Developed as a collective whole, the V8i software portfolio facilitates streamlined workflows among multiple disciplines and across project teams throughout the infrastructure lifecycle.

The benefits of V8i include increased information quality, enhanced infrastructure asset quality, improved operational safety, reduced project costs, and shortened delivery times. Among the many innovative core capabilities of V8i are intuitive design modeling, interactive dynamic views, intrinsic geo-coordination, and incredible project performance.

Some of the key business benefits of V8i to user organizations include:


* Infrastructure project improvements leading to lower total installed cost coupled with lower operating expenses,

* More efficient retrofits and modifications throughout an asset’s lifecycle,

* A competitive edge in the face of increased global competition,

* Increased efficiency, safety, and reliability of infrastructure and the services it provides.

Know more about the V8i Software Portfolio for Infrastructure Professionals

Read More

Join: 2009 BE Awards Student Design Competition

Bentley Systems’ BE Careers Network today announced the opening of its 2009 BE Awards student design competition – an integral part of Bentley’s annual BE Awards of Excellence program honoring the extraordinary work of its users. University, technical college, and high school students are invited to submit projects they’ve designed using Bentley software, along with a short essay describing their work. The judging will focus on creativity and skill in applying design and engineering principles. The program welcomes both individual and team efforts, but teams cannot exceed three members. All submissions must be received by Feb. 20, 2009. Bentley will award a $1,000 scholarship to the winning individual or team in each of the five submission categories.

“As we continue to progress toward our goal of sustaining the world’s infrastructure, we must also sustain the architectural, engineering, construction (AEC), and geospatial professions charged with this critically important mission,” said Scott Lofgren, global director of BE Careers Network. “It is well known that the world faces an increasing shortfall in the number of trained architects and engineers available to surmount the growing backlog of infrastructure work. By bringing software-supported infrastructure curricula into academic institutions and sponsoring initiatives such as our BE Awards student design competition, Bentley strives to encourage a new generation to pursue careers that span the broad spectrum of infrastructure professions.”

Lofgren continued, “Each year, the job of determining the top projects in our competition becomes more challenging for our panel of independent judges – as the software tools the students are required to use help them achieve ever-higher levels of creative, quality design work.

It’s a challenge everyone involved in the program eagerly anticipates since it provides us with a growing number of incredibly imaginative entries to review and appreciate.”

University and technical college students can submit projects in one of three categories: Architectural Design, Computational Design Using GenerativeComponents, and Engineering.

In each of these categories students must make clear the project’s problem, intent, and solution, and support the design models with architectural or engineering drawings using any of the applications in Bentley’s comprehensive portfolio of software for the lifecycle of infrastructure. High school students can participate in the Design a Sports Arena of the Future category using MicroStation PowerDraft XM Edition. The fifth category, Animation and Freeform/Artistic Expression, is open to all academic levels and requires students to take their projects from concept to completion using Bentley software.

The winning projects will be recognized at BE Conference 2009, which takes place next May in Charlotte, N.C. In addition to the $1,000 scholarship, winners will receive an award trophy and can select 10 seats of Bentley software – from the more than 50 products available through the academic subscription – for use by their schools. Project submissions will be judged by a distinguished panel of educational leaders and industry professionals from around the world.

For more information on the submission process or to fill out a submission form, visit www.bentley.com/AcademicBEAwards. To view the 2008 jury process, please visit www.bentley.com/2008JuryVideo.

Read More

Bentley Acquired Struc-Soft Inc

Bentley Systems, Incorporated today announced that it has acquired Struc-Soft Inc., a leading Montreal-based reseller and developer of 2D and 3D engineering, construction, and fabrication products for analysis, design, and drawing production. Struc-Soft has been the exclusive North American reseller of Bentley’s ProSteel 3D structural steel detailing and fabrication software since 2000, and also offers custom-developed ProSteel add-ons for specialized applications such as stairs, light-gauge walls and trusses, offshore platforms and jackets, pressure vessels, and towers. Through its team of certified engineering professionals, Struc-Soft also provides expert services for ProSteel users – from consultation and customization to implementation, training, and long-term support.

The Struc-Soft structural group focuses on software for buildings and plants. It will serve as a Bentley center of excellence in North America for users of Bentley’s extensive portfolio of products for structural steel and concrete detailing, fabrication, and construction.

The Struc-Soft plant group provides products and services for oil and gas, pulp and paper, mining and metals, pharmaceutical, chemical, manufacturing, food processing, and other plant projects throughout eastern Canada. Its clients range from small consulting firms to global engineering/procurement/construction contracting firms and owner-operators. Among them are SNC-Lavalin Group Inc., BPR-Bechtel, and Petro-Canada. The plant group will become a Bentley center of excellence in Canada for users of Bentley’s extensive portfolio of plant applications.

Commenting on the acquisition, John Riddle, Bentley senior vice president, Global Plant and Building, said, “We welcome to Bentley Systems George Ajami, co-founder and former president of Struc-Soft, and his partner, Diane Hansen, co-founder and former vice president of Struc-Soft, along with their teams of highly qualified structural and plant professionals. Their combined expertise and experience in providing and supporting engineering solutions for structural steel and plant projects will be a valuable addition to Bentley’s extensive professional services offerings.

“At the same time, we look forward to integrating into the Bentley portfolio many of the customized, value-add products that the Struc-Soft team developed to serve special workflow requirements of structural engineers, steel and concrete detailers and fabricators, steel erectors, contractors, and plant designers. These products will further increase the depth of Bentley’s comprehensive software solutions for the lifecycle of infrastructure.”

Ajami, who was just named Bentley director, Global Structural Professional Services, said, “We are extremely pleased to become an integral part of the Bentley team and firmly believe this acquisition will enable our users to achieve increased project quality and new levels of efficiency and productivity. We look forward to further enhancing Bentley’s comprehensive portfolio of integrated solutions for sustaining infrastructure.”

Bentley plans to conduct Struc-Soft business under a Bentley brand. The name Struc-Soft will remain the property of its original owners.

[via]

Read More

Comprehensive New Geospatial Product Portfolio With Powerful GIS Capabilities

Bentley Systems, Incorporated today introduced a comprehensive new geospatial product portfolio with powerful GIS capabilities that supports infrastructure engineering workflows across the entire asset lifecycle, from planning, design, and construction to operations and decommissioning. These products synthesize engineering and geospatial workflows, dispensing with data silos and bridging the traditional divide between GIS specialists and the engineering community. By delivering GIS technology and other spatial information seamlessly and transparently to engineers when they need it, organizational efficiency is increased, errors are decreased, and data quality is improved. Newly introduced products in the portfolio include Bentley Map and Bentley Cadastre as well as Bentley Geospatial Server – all of which extend Bentley’s broad portfolio of existing geospatial products. These new geospatial products will be deployed across multiple solution communities, including cadastre and land development, electric and gas utilites, water and wastewater utilities, communications service providers, and others.

Styli Camateros, Bentley vice president, Civil and Geospatial Products, said, “Bentley’s geospatial product portfolio underscores our commitment to advance GIS for infrastructure and provides engineers and GIS professionals with an entirely new way to work. The products are designed to make spatial data and GIS functionality available within engineering workflows to all users, when they need it and without file transformations or conversions. This results in end-to-end support for spatial data within online and offline workflows and, ultimately, increased organizational efficiency. All of the products in this broad and growing portfolio are open, extensible, and customizable, and they make spatial data available to support the infrastructure asset’s entire lifecycle.”

Bentley Map and Bentley Cadastre

Bentley Map is next-generation software for managing the world’s infrastructure in a geospatial context. It forms the basis of industry-specific products, including Bentley Cadastre, Bentley Electric, Bentley Water, and Bentley Gas. Bentley Map combines powerful GIS functionality with all of the editing precision and graphics capabilities of MicroStation to support extensive spatial analysis, thematic mapping, presentation, and plot production.

“Bentley Map is an extremely powerful, flexible, and easily configurable editing environment that has increased our productivity demonstrably,” said Mario Cipriano, chief information officer, IRIDE Energia.

Using the software’s Geospatial Administrator, end-users can configure business and topological rules without programming. In addition, Bentley Map can edit Oracle® Spatial and other GIS data types, including ESRI SHP files. Its highly flexible output includes 2D and 3D PDFs.

Bentley Cadastre provides powerful support for any type of parcel management workflow for local government, central government, cadastres, and other organizations that manage land or property. Bentley Cadastre ensures that the day-to-day maintenance of cadastral fabric is achieved with the highest possible accuracy by providing the editing environment to underpin a range of possible GIS and geospatial solutions.

Bentley Geospatial Server

Bentley Geospatial Server extends ProjectWise capabilities, adding powerful enterprise access to Oracle® Spatial and other enterprise GIS data stores. Organizations already taking advantage of its capabilities include Greater Toronto Airports Authority; multi-utility IRIDE Energia; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; state-owned mining, power, and industrial processing conglomerate MIBRAG; and the government of Ville de Montréal.

Bentley Geospatial Server also provides unique enterprise access to heterogeneous engineering documentation, whether spatial or nonspatial in nature, through a spatially enabled interface. Bentley Geospatial Server is a federated environment that unites information independently of its source, allowing users to leverage and unify information stored in both spatial databases and as unstructured documents. In addition, it enables live Oracle® Spatial editing with long transactions through Bentley Map, intelligent, distributed printing and plotting, and support for enterprise collaboration and configurable workflows.

“The Technical Data Centre employs several services of the Bentley Geospatial Server that will enable controlled enterprise-wide access to our Oracle® Spatial data and allow us to manage extensive nonspatial engineering documentation in an efficient manner, including direct access through a map-based GUI,” said Mike Robertson, manager, Technical Data Center, Greater Toronto Airports Authority.

Additional Products in the Geospatial Portfolio

Bentley’s wider portfolio of geospatial products includes products for high productivity visualization, raster-to-vector document conversion; extending spatial data into the field to support offline access to enterprise data; and products for publishing spatial and nonspatial data over the web to intranets, extranets, and public websites. In addition, Bentley provides products that support geospatial and engineering workflows in specific industries, including water and wastewater utilities, electric and gas utilities, and communications service providers.

For more information about Bentley’s GIS product portfolio, visit www.bentley.com/en-US/Products .

Read More

Next-Generation Multi-Utility GIS Using Bentley Software

Bentley Systems, Incorporated today announced that IRIDE Energia, part of IRIDE Group, a leading Italian multi-utility comprising companies that manage water, electricity, public lighting, gas, and district heating networks, has built a next-generation geographic information system (GIS) called New SIT around Bentley’s V8 XM Edition versions of Bentley Map, Bentley Geospatial Server, and Bentley Geo Web Publisher. IRIDE Energia is using its New SIT system – and the XML Feature Modeling (XFM) enabled technology upon which it is based – to achieve even higher efficiency in the management of its multi-utility networks. Specifically, the company has set a goal of increasing productivity by at least 20 percent across planning, engineering design, field engineering, and customer service. Driving this gain is the new system’s single source of data – GIS as well as engineering – for anyone who manages or supports the utility networks in any function.

“Bentley’s products enabled us to implement a powerful and flexible GIS system based on a service-oriented architecture to meet our ambitious expansion goals,” says Mario Cipriano, IRIDE Energia chief information officer. “The intra-operation of these Bentley products and their native support of the Oracle® Spatial database were key advantages we compared with alternative approaches. In addition, the system’s XFM object-oriented capability eliminates the need to recode connections between different software systems each time we upgrade software, saving us significant time and money.”

New SIT uses Bentley Map for map management, engineering design, and data update processes and Bentley Geospatial Server for enterprise access to Oracle® Spatial, workflow management, enterprise printing, plotting, and publishing, and engineering documentation management across a distributed enterprise. In addition, it uses Bentley Geo Web Publisher to publish GIS and engineering information to the company’s intranet.

Bentley Geospatial Server enables New SIT’s database to be integrated with SAP for enterprise resource planning and with the existing customer relationship management (CRM) system. The CRM integration means GIS and engineering data are easily accessed by customer service representatives, sales, and marketing teams.

By deploying Bentley products, IRIDE Energia supports its work-order management process through its configurable workflow capabilities, allowing managers to access information on any work order. The new GIS system uses network connectivity logic to track the network from any start point to an end-user location or outage point. Moreover, objects can be queried to determine their sources of power, maintenance activities can be simulated, and customers affected by outages can be identified in real time and alerted.

The GIS and network topology data are exported to separate analysis and modeling environments through Web services. This helps specialists optimize the networks and helps IRIDE Energia achieve maximum performance.

Cipriano concludes, “Thanks to Bentley software, we believe we have one of the most advanced utility GIS systems in the world – as befits a world-class company like IRIDE Energia.”

Visit www.iride-energia.it
Visit www.bentley.com/BEconference

Read More

Bentley: No. 2 Provider of Geospatial Software

Bentley Systems, Incorporated today announced that it has been named the world’s No. 2 provider of geospatial software in a second consecutive Daratech research study.

“Bentley’s successful strategy of advancing GIS for infrastructure has resonated with the user community and enabled this fast-growing provider of software for the world’s infrastructure to once again secure the No. 2 position in our geospatial software study,” said Charles Foundyller, president and CEO of Daratech, Inc. “And, Bentley has reinforced its commitment to the geospatial community with the recent release of Bentley Map, Bentley Geospatial Server, and Bentley Cadastre.”

Said Styli Camateros, Bentley vice president, Civil and Geospatial Products, “The entire geospatial team is proud that Bentley has been named the No. 2 geospatial software vendor in the world in a second consecutive Daratech study. We’ve listened closely to our users in developing our technologies, and the new capabilities in our growing range of advanced geospatial products are all based on that invaluable input.

“For some time now, we have been executing on our strategy of advancing GIS for infrastructure and I am pleased to say that all of the key products in our planned portfolio are now shipping and being adopted quickly by our users. Our goal is to continue to deliver GIS technology seamlessly within engineering workflows and to ensure that users enjoy enhanced productivity through preconfigured yet customizable data models for land parcels, water, electric, gas, and so on. Our vision is also to do away with the traditional divide between GIS specialists and the engineering community.”

Bentley’s products to advance GIS for infrastructure range from Bentley Map on the desktop to Bentley Cadastre, which supports advanced parcel management workflows, to the Bentley Geospatial Server for enterprise access to GIS data, configurable enterprise workflows, a spatial interface to heterogeneous engineering documentation, and enterprise printing, plotting and publishing. Bentley Map forms the basis of a number of new products with configurable industry data models, including Bentley Electric, Bentley Gas, and Bentley Water. Bentley also delivers products that support the use of GIS and engineering data in the field and the publishing of spatial and nonspatial data to intranets, extranets, and public websites.

For more information about Bentley’s geospatial products that advance GIS for infrastructure, visit www.bentley.com/en-US/Products. The latest figures from the geospatial research study are available to Daratech subscribers on request to Daratech.

Read More