Keywords: Intelligent Infrastructure, Augmented Reality, Virtual Excavation, Risk Management, Asset Information Management (AIM), Smart Cities, Point Clouds, Disaster Mitigation, Information Mobility, Seismic Risk, Asset Performance, Context Management, Hypermodels, Information Sustainability
Summary
Amsterdam was the site for a recent event that brought many of the world's leading infrastructure professionals together, Bentley Systems' Be Inspired: Thought Leadership in Infrastructure conference. Over 400 executives from 42 countries representing leading architectural, engineering, construction, and owner-operator organizations attended the by-invitation-only event. The group shared thoughts on best practices, products, and solutions used to implement projects in an increasingly demanding global business environment, and the evolving vision of sustainable intelligent infrastructure.
Organizers dedicated a significant portion of the event to thought leadership presentations by the Be Inspired Award finalists. The awards honor the exceptional work of Bentley users in improving and sustaining the world's infrastructure. The 57 finalists in this year's competition were selected from hundreds of nominations submitted by organizations in 42 countries. An independent panel of industry experts chose one Be Inspired Award winner in each of the 20 project categories from the field of finalists. The judging process included a mix of criteria: benchmarking each project for the degree of integration or interoperability with core business processes, demonstrable impact of change, clear return on investment, societal impact, and level of innovation.
In addition to the 20 infrastructure project categories, Special Recognition Awards were given for Attaining Return on Innovation, Sustaining our Society, Sustaining our Environment, and Sustaining the Professions. An independent panel of jurors nominated the candidates for these awards based on their respective innovative and visionary infrastructure project achievements. These spanned multiple Be Inspired Awards categories. A panel of Bentley executives then reviewed the nominees.
The event featured keynote addresses from Bentley Systems CEO, Greg Bentley, in tandem with SVP Bhupinder Singh. These executives provided updates on the company's status, strategies, roadmap, and their vision of the future for the $14 trillion infrastructure industry.
On the second day of the conference, Dr. H. Kit Miyamoto, CEO Miyamoto International, gave the keynote address. Dr. Miyamoto spoke on this year's major earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan and the associated critical earthquake-related structural engineering issues. A specialist in high-performance earthquake engineering and disaster mitigation, Dr. Miyamoto urged attendees to go beyond the concept of merely "build to code," but instead to aggressively seek ways to manage the seismic risk effectively. Simulation and modeling technology is vital in the search to reduce risk.
In addition to keynotes and finalist presentations, there were roundtable discussions on a range of infrastructure asset lifecycle topics. Separate roundtable discussion groups were able to focus on different industry perspectives or specific phases of design-build–operate as well as collaborating on differing stakeholder objectives.
Keynote Highlights Working Smarter, Together
After welcoming and introductory remarks by Malcolm Walter, COO, Bentley Systems CEO, Greg Bentley, took center stage. His keynote address summarized how the company supports intelligent infrastructure by offering industry-leading solutions in information modeling and innovative technologies that ease the integration of project workflows from engineering and construction through operations. The three-day event in Amsterdam showcased dozens of the world's leading projects in infrastructure and plants that utilized Bentley solutions. The best practices and project workflows associated with these award-winning projects reflects Bentley's major contribution in creating intelligent infrastructure on a global basis. Greg Bentley's message was that by working smarter together, we will not only improve ROI, but also gain "return on talent."
According to Mr. Bentley, the company's resiliency helps demonstrate the value of its offering. Following the recent global economic downturn, the company continues to increase its presence in the more than $14 trillion infrastructure market. Bentley Systems experienced organic growth in all regions, with especially strong market growth in the rapidly growing BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) economies. Bentley's ProjectWise is the enterprise standard for 29 of the world's top 50 design firms and continues to penetrate the top 500 private and public sector owners of infrastructure.
One of the newest technologies to impact the engineering world and asset lifecycle management workflows is point cloud technology. Bentley has seized the opportunity to integrate point cloud processing technology into its product portfolio. Its recent acquisition of Pointools Ltd. supports Bentley's commitment to advance information mobility with integrity across the entire asset lifecycle, from engineering design to operate and maintain workflows. Particularly significant is Bentley's ability to manage the immense amount of data files that are generated as the price of point cloud scanning devices comes down and their use increases dramatically. Instead of this immense amount of data overwhelming both storage and query accessibility, Bentley can provide a functional "as-operated" 3D model for a range of infrastructure workflows. It can eliminate point cloud distribution and adoption obstacles – the so called "big data" problem – through its i-models and ProjectWise work-sharing platform.
The company also announced its acquisition of FormSys, a software development company with an excellent history in 3D design, analysis, and construction for structural engineering, offshore engineering, and naval architecture. The importance of offshore infrastructure increases as the oil & gas industry and other energy industries expand offshore. This acquisition expands Bentley's offerings for the offshore market (begun with the acquisition of SACs earlier this year) to include the design and analysis of floating structures, thus supporting asset management for offshore facilities such as oil platforms, FPSOs, semi-submersibles, and wind farm structures.
Another infrastructure trend Bentley noted is the growth of mega cities. Tomorrow's "smart cities" will require the use of simulation modeling to measure performance metrics and compare existing system behavior to design basis. An example given was using Bentley's Darwin software with design models to help water utilities target areas of high water leakage. Expanded information mobility will include sub-surface modeling aspects. As an example of advanced technologies for enhanced reality, the company demonstrated "virtual excavation."
To support sustainable infrastructure, Bentley announced the commercial availability of its AECOsim Energy Simulator and AECOsim Building Designer offerings. The significance of these announcements is that, while today, the designs of an increasing number of buildings are certified to standards such as LEED, few owner-operators measure the operating performance of their buildings. The AECOsim products enable BIM programs to integrate energy and building information across the asset's lifecycle. Additionally, the AECOsim Building Designer will allow different engineering disciplines to use the same data.
The inclusion of point cloud data will further increase the viability, robustness, and data integrity of Bentley's i-model format, which the company developed to enable open exchange of infrastructure-related information. To support this effort, Bentley announced new agreements with Adobe and Bluebeam Software. Bluebeam provides PDF creation, markup, and editing tools for AEC workflows. Integrating PDF documents with i-models will improve the AECO engineering process, especially the review portion, since mark-ups can now be synchronized with the original, and the complete data set can then be exported to other means of visualization, including the iPad.
In a related announcement, Bentley announced several applications for the iPad, including Bentley Navigator for the iPad and ProjectWise Explorer for the iPad. The company is also expanding the reach of its Integrated Structural Modeling (ISM) methodology to on-site stakeholders such as structural engineers and fabrication professionals by a view app for iPads and iPhones.
Enabled by Bentley's new expanded relationship with Microsoft, Bentley is bringing a broad range of Azure–based cloud services for sustaining infrastructure, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO). Beginning with the initial offering, Bentley Transmittal Services, AECO groups will be able to package and exchange transmittals through a dashboard portal. These shared services will benefit users of both the AssetWise platform for information modeling and ProjectWise collaboration platform by lowering risk, reducing time required, and providing greater transparency and visibility of project status.
During a discussion of the AssetWise solution offering, Greg Bentley emphasized the need to have engineering information available to all stakeholders, the conversion of a handover approach to a "hands-on" approach to improve information usability, the use of hypermodels, and the need for context management to enable engineering/operations collaboration. To illustrate his point, he used the ARC Advisory Group Asset Information Management (AIM) Solution model.
ARC and Bentley agree that good asset information management offers significant benefits to asset-intensive organizations. Good asset information improves asset performance and the productivity of everyone in asset management. It also helps reduce risk. Since context enhances information quality and usability, organizations need context management solutions to unleash these benefits. Bentley's AssetWise platform addresses this challenge.
Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and Structural Engineering
Other keynotes included H. Kit Miyamoto, CEO and structural engineer for Miyamoto International, Global Risk Miyamoto, and nonprofit Miyamoto Disaster Relief. Dr. Miyamoto spoke on this year's major earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan and the associated critical earthquake-related structural engineering issues. He specializes in high-performance earthquake engineering, as well as disaster mitigation, response, and reconstruction. As an expert in seismic risk mitigation, Dr. Miyamoto and his team have directed assessments on over 400,000 earthquake-damaged structures.
According to Dr. Miyamoto, recent disasters, such as those in Haiti and Japan, prove that if we continue to just "build to code," we will be embarking on a path to creating "throwaway" buildings in the face of natural seismic events. A structure does not have to fail totally or collapse to create a major problem. A damaged structure or element can cause the asset to be declared unsafe for use for extended periods and cost of associated business interruptions can be staggering. Engineers and designers must seek ways to manage the seismic risk effectively.
It is conceivable that even minor embellishments to structural components in existing infrastructure can reduce damage significantly following a major event. Simulation and modeling is vital in the search to reduce risk and improve risk management.
Be Inspired Finalist Presentations
The Be Inspired Awards finalist presentations represent a major and well-received portion of the overall event. These presentations focused on both greenfield and brownfield infrastructure and plant projects from all over the world, and included the following project segments:
Connecting Project Teams
Innovation in Asset Lifecycle Information Management
Innovation in Bridges
Innovation in Buildings
Campuses, Airports, and Military Installations
Innovation in Communications Networks
Innovation in Construction
Innovation in Generative Design
Innovation in Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Innovation in Government
Innovation in Mining and Metals
Innovations in Multimedia
Innovations in Power Generation
Innovations in Process Manufacturing
Innovations in Rail and Transit
Innovation in Roads
Innovation in Structural Engineering
Innovation in Utility Transmission and Distribution Networks
Innovation in Water and Wastewater Treatment Plants
Innovation in Water, Wastewater, and Stormwater Networks
The finalists in each infrastructure project category were judged on a range of applicable criteria. These included the degree of integration or interoperability with core business processes, demonstrable impact of change, clear return on investment, societal impact, and level of innovation.
The methodology for judging the finalists included a detailed appraisal and evaluation of each finalist's written project summary report, a review of their presentation to the Be Inspired attendees, and a post mortem of the question and answer session that followed the presentation. Jurors did not finalize their selection until the final day. Consequently, finalists had the opportunity to influence the judging process directly through their presentations. Many categories were quite competitive and closely scored, with the quality of the presentations quite high, but only one competitor could be selected as the winner. The event culminated with the awards dinner to recognize the well-deserved winners of the Be Inspired Awards.
ARC participated in the evaluation and judging of presentations in five project categories: asset lifecycle information management, mining and metals, power generation, process manufacturing, and water & wastewater treatment plants. We'll highlight several examples of Be Inspired Awards finalist projects in upcoming ARC Insights.
Roundtable Discussions
In addition to keynotes and finalist presentations, there were executive roundtable discussions on a range of infrastructure asset lifecycle topics. Roundtables were organized for the following topics:
Project Team Collaboration
Determining the ROI of Intelligent Smart Cities Models
Renewable Energy and the Smart Grid
Hypermodels
Operational Integrity Management
The Next Dimension in Managing Mining Assets
Information Sustainability
Interdisciplinary BIM from simulation to operations
Separate roundtable discussion groups were able to focus in on different industry perspectives or specific phases of the design-build–operate lifecycle. The format also allowed ideas to be exchanged in a collaborative environment that stimulated discussion on differing stakeholder objectives.
Last Word
The Be Inspired event is a unique interactive environment that provides attendees an awareness of how thought leaders in infrastructure projects use Bentley offerings to create and improve intelligent, sustainable infrastructure. Attendees were provided with real-life examples of how information modeling and information mobility improve workflows for AECO stakeholders across all phases of the asset lifecycle. These included impressive presentations by both Qatar Petroleum and Southern Company.
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