BIM News

The latest studies place it as the city with the best urban infrastructure in the world. Singapore, surrounded by congestion-free roads, with an excellent electricity and drinking water supply and impeccable public transportation - not to mention the large flow of international flights coordinated from Changi Airport - is growing carefully as planned. It grows in population, grows in wealth and, of course, in infrastructure.

The sustainable development of urban infrastructure is one of the major challenges of the 21st century, due to the overpopulation that most cities are experiencing. Singapore has advanced many of these problems with a state-of-the-art infrastructure system.

Bentley Systems has contributed greatly to this urban landscape. Buildings like The Esplanade, The Resorts World at Setosa, The Marina Bay Integrated Resorts Competition, and The Marina Bayfront Pedestrian Bridge include Bentley solutions.

Actually, this year, the annual The Year in Infrastructure conference was held in one of the most iconic buildings in Asia, the Marina Bay Sands resort, which was done by Arup and was Bentley’s 2010 Be Inspired Award winner for Innovation in Structural Engineering.

Undisputed Leader

Bentley Systems has undoubtedly become the greatest provider of solutions for advancing infrastructures. This is demonstrated by their latest innovations presented under the title Going Digital, in The Year in Infrastructure.

One new item that has attracted more interest among users is the iModel 2.0 Cloud Platform and its iModelHub Cloud Service, an accelerator of digitalization for users of its ProjectWise Design Integration services. “Without requiring changing existing BIM applications or processes, the iModelHub cloud service, invoking application-specific ‘iModel bridges’ is triggered automatically by ProjectWise.” announced Bentley System’s founder, Keith Bentley, who also said loud and clear: "Store the change, don't store the results of the change!"

Adding iModelHub takes advantage of Microsoft Azure cloud services to fully enable a connected project – synchronizing all checked-in project changes, and automatically updating a composite project iModel for comprehensive and continuous design reviews, highlighting progress and risks in digital workflows across disciplines. Check out all the iModelHub cloud services features!

Another of the most successful announcements was the new ProjectWise CONNECT Edition cloud services, powered by Microsoft Azure. The Azure-based services complement ProjectWise Design Integration service, the proven workhorse for work-sharing across collaborating engineering teams –which can be deployed on-premises, as a cloud service, or in any hybrid combination.

By virtue of the shared Azure platform, project delivery organizations using both ProjectWise CONNECT Edition’s new “365 Services” and Microsoft Office 365 will increasingly benefit from digital workflows between their engineering work processes and enterprise productivity tools. Along with “365 Services”, Bentley’s connected data environment, shared between ProjectWise and AssetWise, now includes Components Center, ContextShare, ConstructSim Completions and iModelHub services. 

Corey Sanders, Head of Product for Azure Compute, and guest keynote in The Year in Infrastructures presented all of the possibilities of Microsoft Azure and how it is helping Bentley's projects.

BIM for the full rail and transit lifecycle

Bentley Systems' new OpenRail is the first to advance BIM for the full Rail and Transit Lifecycle – systems engineering from planning through performance. The OpenRail solution comprises applications and services for the comprehensive planning, engineering, project delivery, and operations of rail and transit infrastructure. OpenRail’s foundation is Bentley’s connected data environment (CDE), shared by ProjectWise collaboration services and AssetWise operations services, through which OpenRail now brings together digital components and digital context, through digital workflow.

OpenRail applications will include OpenRail ConceptStation, now available for conceptual railway planning and design; OpenRail Designer, available early in 2018, for detailed engineering and 3D design of track, overhead line, tunnels, bridges, and related civil infrastructure, and AECOsim Station Designer, for the comprehensive modeling of rail and transit stations.

Digital Workflows

In digital workflows, data captured or created for one purpose is accessed by computer programs for other purposes, saving time, minimizing rework, and improving data quality over the asset lifecycle. Digital workflows can also converge the work of different disciplines for additional advancements in project delivery and asset performance. Examples enabled by digital workflows include conceptioneering, constructioneering, inspectioneering, and operationeering. Each of these workflows represents new opportunities for engineers and their work to add value beyond their traditional role in design, to include contributions to construction, inspections, and operations.

The advancement of digital workflows in OpenRail will help users to achieve faster delivery, system-wide visibility, assured compliance, and better decisions in design, construction, and operations of rail infrastructure.

Learn more about OpenRail here.

Digital engineering models

Siemens and Bentley Systems have been joining efforts in the development of projects since their strategic alliance announced in November 2016. Together they drive new business value by accelerating digitalization in order to advance infrastructure project delivery and asset performance in complementary business areas. 

One of the main benefits of this alliance is accumulating intelligence from Siemens' solutions throughout Bentley’s complementary applications for design modeling, analytical modeling, construction modeling and asset performance modeling. As a result, the integrated and accessible digital engineering models, such as the 'digital twin' viewed through an immersive 3D interface, will enable unprecedented operational performance, visibility, and reliability. This work will converge digital engineering models: physical engineering models in their 3D physical reality context by way of Bentley’s software solutions and the corresponding functional engineering 2D models within Siemens’ solutions.

These jointly funded and resourced development projects will result in jointly offered cloud services to advance their respective users’ strategies in going digital. Gerhard Fohringer, Head of Digitalization Strategy at Siemens and Carsten Gerke, VP Strategic Relationships at Bentley Systems, explains how Siemens is facing the six-year-old digitalization strategy of the company and how that works within the context of infrastructure projects from Bentley.

Let's be inspired!

Since 2004, the Be Inspired Awards have honored the extraordinary work of Bentley users advancing infrastructure design, construction, and operations and showcases excellence and innovation of infrastructure projects around the world. 

This edition, 51 finalists from more than 400 nominations were selected by ten independent jury panels comprised of distinguished industry experts. After their presentations in the various forums at The Year in Infrastructure 2017 Conference, Bentley acknowledged 17 Be Inspired Awards winners and 6 Special Recognition Awards winners at the Be Inspired Awards ceremony and gala. 

Be Inspired Special Recognition Awards winners for 2017 

Asset Information Management Advancement

• Oregon Department of Transportation – TransInfo —A Connected Data Environment for Transportation – Salem, Oregon, United States 
• Comprehensive BIM Advancement
• Guangdong Hydropower Planning & Design Institute – Guangdong Pearl River Delta Water Resources Allocation Project – Guangdong Province, China 

Conceptioneering Advancement

• HNTB Corporation – I-94 Modernization Project – Detroit, Michigan, United States 
• Constructioneering Advancement
• China Construction Sixth Engineering Division, Tianjin University of Technology, and Tianjin Tianhe-Cloud Building Engineering Technology Co., Ltd. – Sanya New Airport Reclamation Project – Sanya, Hainan, China 

Inspectioneering Advancement

• SEIKEY Enterprise Drone Solutions – Cell Tower Inspections 4G and 5G – Caronno Pertusella, Varese, Italy
• Operationeering Advancement
• Outotec – Design for Reliability Project in Counter Current Decantation (CCD) – Helsinki, Finland 

Be Inspired Awards winners for 2017

BIM Advancements in Bridges

• Long Jian Road & Bridge Co., Ltd. – Heihe-Blagoveshchensk Heilongjiang River (Amur River) Road Bridge Project – Heihe City, Heilongjiang Province, China 

BIM Advancements in Buildings and Campuses

• Morphosis – Bloomberg Center Project – New York, New York, United States

BIM Advancements in Construction

• Leighton Asia – Hong Kong Boundary Crossing Facilities, Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge – Hong Kong

BIM Advancements in Environmental Engineering

• NJS Engineers India Pvt. Ltd. – JICA Assisted Ganga Action Plan II – Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India

BIM Advancements in Manufacturing

• Satria Technologies Sdn. Bhd. – Sustainable Solutions for Control & Protection Systems – Klang, Selangor, Malaysia 

BIM Advancements in Mining and Offshore Engineering

• Offshore Oil Engineering Company Limited – Field Jacket Design and Development of ‘Fixed Offshore Structure Design Tool’ – Tianjin, China 

BIM Advancements in Municipal Operations

• Huadong Engineering Corporation Limited, PowerChina – Application of BIM Strategy for Shenzhen Qianhai Municipal Infrastructure – Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province, China 

BIM Advancements in Power Generation

• China Water Resource Pearl River Planning Surveying & Designing Co., Ltd. – Wugachong Reservoir Project in Pu’an County of Guizhou Province – Pu'an County, Qianxinan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province, China 

BIM Advancements in Project Delivery

• Mott MacDonald and the Costain, VINCI Construction Grands Projets, Bachy Soletanche Joint Venture – East Section of the Thames Tideway Tunnel – London, England, United Kingdom 

BIM Advancements in Rail and Transit

• Mass Rapid Transit Corporation Sdn. Bhd. – Klang Valley Mass Rapid Transit Project - Sungai Buloh-Serdang-Putrajaya Line – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 

BIM Advancements in Reality Modeling

• CEDD-AECOM- The Earth Solutions – Development of Anderson Road Quarry Site – Hong Kong 

BIM Advancements in Roads

• CCCC First Highway Consultants, Co., Ltd. – Application of BIM Strategy on the Transformation of Meiguan Expressway to Urban Road Design Project – Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province, China 

BIM Advancements in Road and Rail Asset Performance

• Highways England – Network Occupancy Management System (NOMS) – Strategic Road Network, England, United Kingdom 

BIM Advancements in Utilities and Industrial Asset Performance

• BP – Khazzan Central Information Store – Khazzan Field, Block 61, Ad Dhahirah Governorate, Oman 

BIM Advancements in Utilities Transmission and Distribution

• Pestech International Berhad – Automation and Integration of Substation Design Project – Kratie and Kampong Cham, Cambodia 

BIM Advancements in Water and Wastewater Plants

• Beijing Institute of Water – Tongzhou Water Works of Beijing South-to-North Water Diversion Project – Beijing, China 

BIM Advancements in Water Networks

• AEGEA – AEGEA Prolagos Sewerage Master Plan 2041 – Região dos Lagos, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Bentley Systems has posted highlights of this year’s winning projects on its website. 

BIMCommunity interviewed several Bentley's experts who present the latest innovations in different fields. We will publish all these content on the website very soon. Stay tuned!