LONDON, U.K. – The Year in Infrastructure 2018 Conference – 15 October 2018 – Siemens and Bentley Systems announced today the introduction of PlantSight, resulting from development together based on their highly complementary software portfolios. PlantSight is a digital solution to benefit customers through more efficient plant operations. PlantSight enables as-operated and up-to-date digital twins which synchronize with both physical reality and engineering data, creating a holistic digital context for consistently understood digital components across disparate data sources, for any operating plant. Plant operators benefit from high trustworthiness and quality of information for continuous operational readiness and more reliability.
Every real-world operating plant is characterized by cumulative evolution, both to its brownfield physical condition and to the varied types and formats of theoretically corresponding engineering data. Accordingly, as-operated digital twins must reliably synchronize reflections of both the physical reality and its virtual engineering representations, comprehensively and accurately. Moreover, further frequent changes are inevitable. With PlantSight, every process plant owner-operator can realize the benefits of as-operated digital twins – without disruption to their existing physical or virtual environment.
For process industries, characterized by ongoing capital projects, the effectiveness of digital twins depends upon the integrity and accessibility of as-operated information presented and continuously updated in trusted 2D schematic and 3D model formats. PlantSight provides all stakeholders with cloud/web-enabled visibility and access into existing data and tool interfaces, assuring that changes are timely and accurately captured and managed.
With PlantSight as-operated digital twin cloud services, operational and project-related engineering data is aligned seamlessly. All disciplines and stakeholders have immediate access to consistent representations. Especially for brownfield installations, the time and effort to federate and complete asset information will be significantly reduced, with plant documentation kept up to date, and its quality accordingly improved.
Greg Bentley, CEO for Bentley Systems, said, “From the start of Bentley Systems’ strategic alliance with Siemens, we have together seen our development of PlantSight as having perhaps the most significance for our marketplace. Siemens’ announced combination of its digital offerings for discrete and process plants enables our bringing together, through a cloud service, the complementary elements of COMOS, OpenPlant, MindSphere, and Teamcenter. PlantSight can now realize the process industries’ top priority in ‘going digital’— the digital twin enablement of their operating plant engineering!”
“With PlantSight, we’re stepping up our cooperation with Bentley and extending the possibilities offered by data utilization for the process industry. This joint solution based on the complementary know-how of Bentley and Siemens represents a key step towards making digital twins even more efficient and creating a digitally integrated value chain, which offers even greater consistency. In this way, we’re continuously enlarging our Digital Enterprise portfolio by embracing future technologies,” said Klaus Helmrich, Member of the Management Board of Siemens AG.
Valentijn de Leeuw, Vice President ARC Advisory Group, said, “I believe that Siemens’ and Bentley’s newly-developed PlantSight services will establish a foundation for next-generation asset information and performance management. For as-operated digital twins, this augments the actual plant by integrating operational data with operational intelligence dashboards, immersive operator training simulation, and links with applications such as process simulation, asset strategy, and reliability. The benefits of the environment will increase with the number of microservices provided.”
Siemens AG (Berlin and Munich) is a global technology powerhouse that has stood for engineering excellence, innovation, quality, reliability and internationality for 170 years. The company is active around the globe, focusing on the areas of electrification, automation and digitization. One of the world's largest producers of energy-efficient, resource-saving technologies, Siemens is a leading supplier of efficient power generation and power transmission solutions and a pioneer in infrastructure solutions as well as automation, drive and software solutions for industry. The company with its listed subsidiary Siemens Healthineers AG is also a leading provider of medical imaging equipment – such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging systems – and a leader in laboratory diagnostics as well as clinical IT. In fiscal 2017, which ended on September 30, 2017, Siemens generated revenue of €83.0 billion and net income of €6.2 billion. At the end of September 2017, Siemens had around 377,000 employees worldwide. Further information is available on the Internet at www.siemens.com.
About Bentley Systems
Bentley Systems is the leading global provider of software solutions to engineers, architects, geospatial professionals, constructors, and owner-operators for the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure. Bentley’s MicroStation-based engineering and BIM applications, and its digital twin cloud services, advance the project delivery (ProjectWise) and the asset performance (AssetWise) of transportation and other public works, utilities, industrial and resources plants, and commercial and institutional facilities.
Bentley Systems employs more than 3,500 colleagues, generates annual revenues of $700 million in 170 countries, and has invested more than $1 billion in research, development, and acquisitions since 2012. From inception in 1984, the company has remained majority-owned by its five founding Bentley brothers. Bentley shares transact by invitation on the NASDAQ Private Market; strategic partner Siemens AG has accumulated a non-voting minority stake.
About the PlantSight Vision
PlantSight coalesces project digital twins, and control systems digital twins, and will soon extend to performance digital twins, and component product digital twins.
PlantSight mirrors the physical plant through “continuous” surveys and reality modeling cloud services. Overlapping photographs and (as needed) supplemental laser scans, from UAVs and ground-level imagery, are processed to generate spatially-classified and engineering-ready reality meshes—the plant’s digital context, within which can be geospatially located each tagged component.
To synchronize with the plant’s evolving engineering data, Bentley and Siemens COMOS teams worked together to create PlantSight’sConnected Data Environment (CDE). It includes information bridges from engineering models and an integration hub to accomplish the required semantic alignment for digital components (including their tag designations). PlantSight’s CDE is also populated by pertinent data from other sources, such as project deliverables and control systems inputs, to the degree referenced through digital component tags.
For engineers in operating plants, the value of an as-operated digital twin is determined by the accessibility and integrity of information that can be presented, and edited, in trusted formats of schematics and 3D models. PlantSight, through its new cloud service and web interface, takes advantage of the complementarity, proven engineering robustness and intelligence of COMOS and OpenPlant, fully integrating functional and spatial modeling. For the first time, engineers on site can have both accessible existing data, and accessible tool interfaces, to assure that as-operated changes are timely and accurately captured and managed through PlantSight’s ledger of changes, for assured fidelity.
Just as significantly, the as-operated digital twin, through the cloud accessibility and securely open architecture of its CDE, provides immersive visibility throughout the operating plant lifecycle, including mixed-reality visualization of all information, and even more importantly, digital visibility for machine learning and analytics.
PlantSight digital twin cloud services will be marketed separately by both Siemens and Bentley, and early adopters are now being selected. The companies are now working to add to PlantSight state-of-the-art asset performance modeling (APM) capabilities, to make the most of services based on Siemens’ MindSphere IoT operating system. For manufactured digital components, Siemens’ Teamcenter PLM will provide immersive access to product digital twins for simulation and remediation.
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Bentley, the Bentley logo, AssetWise, MicroStation, OpenPlant, and ProjectWise are either registered or unregistered trademarks or service marks of Bentley Systems, Incorporated or one of its direct or indirect wholly owned subsidiaries. PlantSight is a trademark of Siemens AG and Siemens PLMS Inc. All other brands and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.
Combines Bentley’s advanced asset performance software capabilities and Siemens’ complementary power generation expertise to deliver enhanced equipment
availability, reliability, and cost efficiency
LONDON, U.K. – The Year in Infrastructure 2018 Conference – 15 October 2018 – Siemens and Bentley Systems have announced a joint technology and service solution, consisting of their complementary offerings, to speed up the digitalization of power plants and provide intelligent analytics with a range of innovative offerings and managed services solutions. The new service, to be hosted on Siemens’ cloud-based open IoT operating system, MindSphere, will combine Bentley’s advanced asset performance software capabilities with Siemens’ complementary technology and service expertise to empower power plant owners to take full advantage of digitalization, which helps improve maintenance operations and planning.
Siemens’ asset performance management (APM) solution, part of the company’s Omnivise digital solutions portfolio, covers the entire power plant, including the combustion and steam turbines as well as associated generators and pumps, motors, transformers, valves, switchgears, and other equipment that affects plant reliability and performance. Using intelligent models based on predictive analytics, the solution takes data from multiple sources, applies domain and analytical expertise, and then seamlessly integrates into a customer’s existing Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS)/Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) environment to improve maintenance planning, reduce outages, and increase workforce efficiency.
APM service solutions are tailored to each organization’s unique needs, based on variable factors such as plant configuration, on-site resources, equipment expertise, and plant operations and maintenance strategy. The scope of options ranges from on-premises installation or cloud-based MindSphere hosting, to turnkey set-up of APM – complete with Siemens asset models – to APM as a service, with a fully integrated managed service solution set up and run remotely by Siemens power plant experts.
Laura Anderson, head of the Siemens Power Generation Services Controls and Digitalization business, said, “APM for Power Plants is evidence of the benefits this strategic alliance brings to our customers. By combining Siemens’ and Bentley’s complementary and proven areas of expertise, this innovative offering will help our customers manage costs, improve reliability, and increase the performance and availability of their thermal power infrastructure.”
Greg Bentley, CEO, Bentley, said, “We’re excited to be delivering, in this case for power plant owners, operational advantages made uniquely possible by our work with Siemens to leverage IoT and performance digital twins. In effect, we are together advancing APM towards asset performance modeling—where our engineering technologies (ET) compound the value of IT and operations technologies (OT).”
Siemens AG (Berlin and Munich) is a global technology powerhouse that has stood for engineering excellence, innovation, quality, reliability and internationality for 170 years. The company is active around the globe, focusing on the areas of electrification, automation and digitalization. One of the world’s largest producers of energy-efficient, resource-saving technologies, Siemens is a leading supplier of efficient power generation and power transmission solutions and a pioneer in infrastructure solutions as well as automation, drive and software solutions for industry. The company is also a leading provider of medical imaging equipment – such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging systems – and a leader in laboratory diagnostics as well as clinical IT. In fiscal 2017, which ended on September 30, 2017, Siemens generated revenue of €83.0 billion and net income of €6.2 billion. At the end of September 2017, the company had around 377,000 employees worldwide. Further information is available on the Internet at www.siemens.com.
About Bentley Systems
Bentley Systems is the leading global provider of software solutions to engineers, architects, geospatial professionals, constructors, and owner-operators for the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure. Bentley’s MicroStation-based engineering and BIM applications, and its digital twin cloud services, advance the project delivery (ProjectWise) and the asset performance (AssetWise) of transportation and other public works, utilities, industrial and resources plants, and commercial and institutional facilities.
Bentley Systems employs more than 3,500 colleagues, generates annual revenues of $700 million in 170 countries, and has invested more than $1 billion in research, development, and acquisitions since 2012. From inception in 1984, the company has remained majority-owned by its five founding Bentley brothers. Bentley shares transact by invitation on the NASDAQ Private Market; strategic partner Siemens AG has accumulated a non-voting minority stake.
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Bentley, the Bentley logo, AssetWise, MicroStation, and ProjectWise are either registered or unregistered trademarks or service marks of Bentley Systems, Incorporated or one of its direct or indirect wholly owned subsidiaries. All other brands and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.
Automating digital workflows to replicate best projects’ successes!
LONDON, U.K. – The Year in Infrastructure 2018 Conference – 15 October 2018 – Bentley Systems, Incorporated announced the general availability of integration between ProjectWise 365 Services and Microsoft 365. The collaboration capabilities of Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Flow, alongside analytics from Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Power BI, can now be applied to mainstream automated digital workflows within ProjectWise. The integration will enable collaborative digital workflows that transcend system boundaries throughout infrastructure capital project delivery, ensuring standards and best practices are propagated across projects, and increasing repeatability, scalability, quality, and predictability—in effect, industrializing project delivery, so that project teams can widely replicate their best projects’ successes.
Neil Lee, IT Director - Applications, Mott MacDonald, said, “The integration of ProjectWise and Microsoft Office 365 will be a significant enabler for our ongoing digital strategy for project delivery. Our evaluation of the integration capability against the typical demands of our project teams demonstrated that Bentley and Microsoft are fulfilling the vision of enabling more seamless and automated digital workflows for project teams to access project information residing in either Office 365 or ProjectWise. Our project teams will be enabled to drive improved project outcomes with more streamlined collaboration that enables faster and more informed decisions.”
ProjectWise 365 Services also embrace every project stakeholder, connected through Microsoft’s Azure cloud service and Bentley’s new integrated web-based PDF review and markup. Bentley’s Azure-based Connected Data Environment (CDE) uniquely enables digital workflows to reach throughout the project and asset lifecycle. Now every level of the extended team can have assured and secure access to the correct and current project deliverables—including for collaboration through automated digital workflows.
ProjectWise 365 Services include ProjectWise Project Insights, enabling proactive project management with automated “right-time” project status dashboards that help identify trends and potential issues early to mitigate risks. Project Insights deliver rich and actionable project execution insights, and leveraging Microsoft Power BI, users can combine design status with financial, schedule, and other project information for a comprehensive view of project performance.
AECOM, a premier, fully integrated global infrastructure firm, is an early adopter of ProjectWise 365 across its enterprise. Norris Spencer, Highways Information Manager, AECOM, said, “ProjectWise Project Insights is delivering a new perspective to leadership and project management as the dashboards provide unique views of information management practices and Building Information Model health across the CDE.” Elizabeth Berna, Information Manager, AECOM, added, “Our project managers also use the dashboards to identify trends in project performance providing the client with new ways of assessing project health.”
Noah Eckhouse, senior vice president of Project Delivery, Bentley Systems, said, “We thank the early adopters of ProjectWise 365 Services for their guidance and feedback. This integration with Microsoft 365 brings automated digital workflows to the extended project team and will help users replicate best practices across a team’s projects. And significantly, now ProjectWise users can add Bentley’s new Azure-based iTwin™ Services, taking advantage of automated digital workflows within ProjectWise to align and synchronize project digital twins for continuous and comprehensive status reviews.”
Ron Markezich, corporate vice president, Microsoft Office 365 Commercial, Microsoft Corp., said, “The extended integration between ProjectWise and Microsoft Office 365 helps project delivery organizations in going digital, empowering their organizations to improve project productivity and deliver better outcomes.”
At Microsoft Inspire 2018, Microsoft’s annual conference for its partner community, Bentley Systems was awarded as Microsoft’s “2018 CityNext Partner of the Year.” Bentley’s SYNCHRO 4D construction modeling software was featured in the Mixed Reality and the Cloud session. With SYNCHRO’s digital workflows, constructors don’t need to recreate 3D construction models from scratch, which would have orphaned the BIM models created during design. ProjectWise, with Teams and Flow, will automate digital workflows for construction planning to leverage the BIM intelligence. This immersive environment for visibility into the path and sequence of construction completes the reach for project delivery. Microsoft and Bentley are working together on further HoloLens applications for ProjectWise and SYNCHRO to be introduced later in the year.
About ProjectWise
ProjectWise is the industry standard for digital project delivery and is used by 70 percent of Engineering News-Record’s Top 250 Design Firms in the design and engineering of all types of infrastructure assets.
Leveraging the scalability, reliability, and security of Microsoft Azure and the collaboration capabilities of Microsoft 365, ProjectWise provides assured access to project information for extended project teams throughout the entire project delivery lifecycle; automates BIM workflows for work sharing, design review, issues resolution, and contractual deliverables; and provides performance insights for better informed and more timely decisions. To learn more, visit www.Bentley.com/ProjectWise.
About Bentley Systems
Bentley Systems is the leading global provider of software solutions to engineers, architects, geospatial professionals, constructors, and owner-operators for the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure. Bentley’s MicroStation-based engineering and BIM applications, and its digital twin cloud services, advance the project delivery (ProjectWise) and the asset performance (AssetWise) of transportation and other public works, utilities, industrial and resources plants, and commercial and institutional facilities.
Bentley Systems employs more than 3,500 colleagues, generates annual revenues of $700 million in 170 countries, and has invested more than $1 billion in research, development, and acquisitions since 2012. From inception in 1984, the company has remained majority-owned by its five founding Bentley brothers. Bentley shares transact by invitation on the NASDAQ Private Market; strategic partner Siemens AG has accumulated a non-voting minority stake.
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Bentley, the Bentley logo, AssetWise, Connected Data Environment, iTwin, MicroStation, SYNCHRO, and ProjectWise are either registered or unregistered trademarks or service marks of Bentley Systems, Incorporated or one of its direct or indirect wholly owned subsidiaries. All other brands and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.
With new OpenBuildings Station Designer, enables unprecedented collaborative digital workflows to fully model pedestrian traffic in transportation design
LONDON, U.K. – The Year in Infrastructure 2018 Conference – 15 October 2018 – Bentley Systems, Incorporated, the leading global provider of comprehensive software solutions for advancing the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure, today announced the acquisition of leading pedestrian simulation software provider LEGION, based in London and supporting more than half of the world’s 40 largest transit agencies. The acquisition augments Bentley’s comprehensive modeling environment with collaborative digital workflows to explore and validate comparative simulations of pedestrian traffic scenarios.
LEGION’s pedestrian simulation application offers modeling capabilities of people’s interactions with each other and physical obstacles, and activities, including circulation and evacuations, within public spaces like railway stations, airports, sports arenas, tall buildings, and street level with vehicle interactions. Using LEGION simulation tools in collaborative digital workflows with Bentley’s OpenBuildings Designer (formerly AECOsim Building Designer), architects, engineers and owners can consider pedestrian traffic in their conceptioneering of design alternatives. The newly announced OpenBuildings Station Designer will enable collaborative digital workflows to fully model pedestrian activities and journeys to and from trains, platforms, and through stations.
Santanu Das, senior vice president of design engineering for Bentley Systems, said, “Because pedestrian traffic and capacity are major concerns for infrastructure planning and operations, collaborative digital workflows for pedestrian simulation need to be prioritized during design. Taking advantage of LEGION’s innovative pedestrian modeling capabilities throughout Bentley’s comprehensive modeling environment will enable better decisions to improve pedestrian circulation, throughput, and overall safety. That’s a great example of the collaborative digital workflows that our open applications, such as OpenBuildings, uniquely support.”
LEGION founder, Douglas Connor, said, “Pedestrian flows should be considered fundamental design criteria for infrastructure assets like train stations or airports which are intrinsically meant to serve the needs of pedestrians. We’re excited to join with Bentley to provide designers, engineers, and owners with pedestrian simulation applications that are integrated with market leading design modeling offerings. Next, we can advance LEGION’s “Science in Motion” vision to incorporate pedestrian simulation quite cohesively—from the strategic and capital planning of an infrastructure project, throughout its design, subsequent retrofits, and into asset operations.”
Samya Ghosh, head-urban space; regional director, transportation (Europe, Middle East, India, and Africa) for global infrastructure firm AECOM, said, “The urban space team of AECOM, based in the UK, has been using LEGION software for various crowd modeling projects for more than 10 years—in numerous national and international projects. The crowd modeling is primarily undertaken to provide an evidence base for wider evaluation of existing and proposed rail infrastructure, public realm, sports venue and major event planning, and design or refurbishment of large institutions. The LEGION software is widely accepted among clients for pedestrian micro-simulation modeling which our professionals use to analyze and inform designs and masterplans. In our recent projects, it has been increasingly important to integrate the pedestrian modeling with BIM and in this respect, I consider the merger of Bentley and LEGION will open up a huge potential.”
About LEGION
Founded in 1997, LEGION is a world-leading developer of pedestrian simulation software. The scientifically validated software accurately simulates and analyzes people’s step-by-step journey through rail/metro stations, stadia, shopping malls and airports. Designers and owners use it to model, test and deliver operational, commercial, footfall, wayfinding, crowd management, and safety strategies. LEGION simulation is based on extensive research of people’s behavior in real contexts. As it microscopically accounts for individual decision making, crowd formation and patterns of movement emerge naturally. More about LEGION.
About Bentley Systems
Bentley Systems is the leading global provider of software solutions to engineers, architects, geospatial professionals, constructors, and owner-operators for the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure. Bentley’s MicroStation-based engineering and BIM applications, and its digital twin cloud services, advance the project delivery (ProjectWise) and the asset performance (AssetWise) of transportation and other public works, utilities, industrial and resources plants, and commercial and institutional facilities.
Bentley Systems employs more than 3,500 colleagues, generates annual revenues of $700 million in 170 countries, and has invested more than $1 billion in research, development, and acquisitions since 2012. From inception in 1984, the company has remained majority-owned by its five founding Bentley brothers. Bentley shares transact by invitation on the NASDAQ Private Market; strategic partner Siemens AG has accumulated a non-voting minority stake.
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Bentley, the Bentley logo, AECOsim Building Designer, AssetWise, LEGION, MicroStation, OpenBuildings Designer, OpenBuildings Station Designer, and ProjectWise are either registered or unregistered trademarks or service marks of Bentley Systems, Incorporated or one of its direct or indirect wholly owned subsidiaries. All other brands and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.
OpenCities Planner takes advantage of city-scale reality modeling to span GIS and BIM
LONDON, U.K. – The Year in Infrastructure 2018 Conference – 15 October 2018 – Bentley Systems Incorporated, the leading global provider of comprehensive software solutions for advancing the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure, today announced the acquisition of Agency9, based in Stockholm. Agency9 has already provided nearly half of Sweden’s larger municipalities with city-scale digital twin cloud services for city planning and related web-based 3D visualization. Since 2012, Agency9 has taken advantage of reality meshes created by Bentley’s ContextCapture reality modeling software as the digital context for visualizing urban infrastructure assets represented in GIS data, terrain surveys, and BIM models. Bentley’s new iTwin™ cloud services, introduced at the conference, add digital alignment and change synchronization for infrastructure engineering digital twins, and will enable OpenCities Planner (formerly Agency9 CityPlanner)to uniquely serve urban planning requirements at fuller levels of detail.
Phil Christensen, Bentley’s senior vice president, reality modeling said, “Our many city users globally have been asking for the useful capabilities which Agency9 has successfully implemented throughout Sweden, to take further advantage of their reality modeling programs. In fact, when we combine Bentley ContextCapture’s 3D surveying advancements (based on hybrid aerial, UAV, and ground-based imagery) with our Connected Data Environment (CDE) technologies for geospatial-to-BIM integration, we make city-scale digital twins as a cloud service broadly accessible. Ultimately synchronizing reality and ‘virtuality,’ OpenCities Planner offers the perfect web solution to enable every city in going digital.”
Håkan Engman, CEO of Agency9, said, “Now that we’re part of Bentley, we’re confident about achieving the full global potential of Agency9’s innovations. My colleagues and I, and our forward-thinking users in the Nordics, have been noted for pushing the envelope of geospatial integration and visual performance to new levels of detail. Now, as contributors toward unique city-scale digital twin cloud services from Bentley, we can foresee the realization of our users’ vision to advance from urban planning to improving cities’ asset performance.”
About Agency9
Agency9 is a leading provider of web and mobile solutions for 3D visualization of geographic information and maps for collaboration and communication. The company was established in 2003 and is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. www.agency9.com
About Bentley Systems
Bentley Systems is the leading global provider of software solutions to engineers, architects, geospatial professionals, constructors, and owner-operators for the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure. Bentley’s MicroStation-based engineering and BIM applications, and its digital twin cloud services, advance the project delivery (ProjectWise) and the asset performance (AssetWise) of transportation and other public works, utilities, industrial and resources plants, and commercial and institutional facilities.
Bentley Systems employs more than 3,500 colleagues, generates annual revenues of $700 million in 170 countries, and has invested more than $1 billion in research, development, and acquisitions since 2012. From inception in 1984, the company has remained majority-owned by its five founding Bentley brothers. Bentley shares transact by invitation on the NASDAQ Private Market; strategic partner Siemens AG has accumulated a non-voting minority stake.
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Bentley, the Bentley logo, Agency9, AssetWise, MicroStation, ContextCapture, iTwin, OpenCities Planner, and ProjectWise are either registered or unregistered trademarks or service marks of Bentley Systems, Incorporated or one of its direct or indirect wholly owned subsidiaries. All other brands and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.
LONDON, U.K. – The Year in Infrastructure 2018 Conference – 15 October 2018 – Atos, a global leader in digital transformation, and Bentley Systems, the leading global provider of comprehensive software solutions for advancing the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure, today announced a strategic partnership through which they will offer a complete solution to create and operate Digital Twins on behalf of industry and infrastructure asset owners.
Atos’ global experience and expertise in digital transformation together with Bentley’s infrastructure, engineering, reality modeling and asset performance software portfolio will enable businesses to take advantage of fully-integrated and managed Digital Twins as a cloud-based service.
This new offering will support owner-operators meet their business KPIs through the following features and benefits:
Markus Schaffhauser, Atos Global Business and Platform Solutions CTO, said, “We have been impressed at the capabilities of Bentley’s software and how well it meshes with our expertise in digital transformation, to now deliver innovative services for industrial and infrastructure asset owners. The Atos-Bentley partnership has gotten off to a faststart, and I am convinced that our digital twin services will be of tremendous value to owners.”
CEO of Bentley Systems, Greg Bentley, said, “I believe that our collaboration with Atos can help owner-operators to really jump-start their ‘going digital’ ambitions, enabling and taking advantage of both immersive visualization and analytical visibility. Atos’ vast expertise in digital data integration, along with their global reach, make them the ideal partner for digital twin cloud services.”
Bentley and Atos have previously worked together on several manufacturing client projects, which brought together Atos’ expertise in system integration and data capture and analytics with Bentley’s reality modelling software.
This partnership was initiated through the Atos and Siemens Global Strategic Alliance, which maximizes the combined strength of Siemens’ products and solutions with Atos’ experience and expertise in enabling IT services to support their digital transformation, notably in the field of IoT services, Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity. In 2016, Bentley Systems also entered into a Strategic Alliance with Siemens to enlarge their respective offerings for infrastructure and industry to the benefit of the end-customers. Since that time, Bentley and Siemens have jointly invested in the development of new solutions including for digitalization of discrete and process manufacturing, power transmission and distribution, railway engineering, and power generation.
About Atos
Atos is a global leader in digital transformation with approximately 100,000 employees in 73 countries and annual revenue of around € 12 billion. European number one in Big Data, Cybersecurity, High Performance Computing and Digital Workplace, the Group provides Cloud services, Infrastructure & Data Management, Business & Platform solutions, as well as transactional services through Worldline, the European leader in the payment industry. With its cutting-edge technologies, digital expertise and industry knowledge, Atos supports the digital transformation of its clients across various business sectors: Defence, Financial Services, Health, Manufacturing, Media, Energy & Utilities, Public sector, Retail, Telecommunications and Transportation. The Group is the Worldwide Information Technology Partner for the Olympic & Paralympic Games and operates under the brands Atos, Atos Consulting, Atos Worldgrid, Bull, Canopy, Unify and Worldline. Atos SE (Societas Europaea) is listed on the CAC40 Paris stock index. More about Atos
About Bentley Systems
Bentley Systems is the leading global provider of software solutions to engineers, architects, geospatial professionals, constructors, and owner-operators for the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure. Bentley’s MicroStation-based engineering and BIM applications, and its digital twin cloud services, advance the project delivery (ProjectWise) and the asset performance (AssetWise) of transportation and other public works, utilities, industrial and resources plants, and commercial and institutional facilities.
Bentley Systems employs more than 3,500 colleagues, generates annual revenues of $700 million in 170 countries, and has invested more than $1 billion in research, development, and acquisitions since 2012. From inception in 1984, the company has remained majority-owned by its five founding Bentley brothers. Bentley shares transact by invitation on the NASDAQ Private Market; strategic partner Siemens AG has accumulated a non-voting minority stake.
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Bentley, the Bentley logo, AssetWise, MicroStation, and ProjectWise are either registered or unregistered trademarks or service marks of Bentley Systems, Incorporated or one of its direct or indirect wholly owned subsidiaries. All other brands and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.
Contacts for journalists:
Bentley Systems
Jennifer Maguire
Phone: +1 610 458 2695
Email: jennifer.maguire@bentley.com
Atos
Laura Fau
Phone: +33 (0) 6 73 64 04 18
Email: laura.fau@atos.net
The Beihu Sewage Treatment Plant project is located on the east side of the intersection of Tengfei Avenue and Bajifu Road in the Wuhan Chemical New Area. Its coverage area includes about 130 square kilometers of the Shahu, Erlang Temple, Luobuzui, and Baiyushan sewage systems and serves 2.48 million people. Covering 532,000 square meters, the Beihu sewage treatment plant will initially treat 800,000 tons of sewage daily and eventually reach a final production rate of 1.5 million tons per day. The new plant is the largest scale sewage treatment plant ever built in China and in greater Asia.
China Railway Shanghai Engineering Bureau (CRSEB) is responsible for constructing the main structure of each unit and the pipeline installation work in the factory. This scope includes civil design of more than 31 buildings, ranging from pump rooms to distribution wells, multiple tanks, and other related treatment equipment. Eleven major categories of electromechanical pipelines are covered by the project engineering requirements. There are major challenges in this project that require highly efficient and controlled design and project management practices to deliver it successfully. Some of the requirements include managing the deformation, shrinkage, and cracking of highly sensitive biological and membrane pools, while accounting for the difficulty of controlling the impermeability of concrete. Minimizing field rework to place the numerous reserved holes and pre-embedded bushings across multiple structures is a monumental challenge requiring robust methods and standards.
To achieve the stringent requirements of the project, CRSEB turned to BIM methodologies to establish a digital twin of the sewage treatment plant. Incorporating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to capture photos of the existing site extended the information-based digital twin to an immersive one. Leveraging the immersive digital twin establishes more reliable engineering workflows, such as rebar modeling. Using the graphical representation of the digital twin helped improve methods for managing project progress and cost and enhance the execution and safety of on-site construction.
CRSEB’s implementation of BIM methodologies combined with Bentley’s OpenBuildings Designer, ContextCapture, ProStructures, and LumenRT resulted in tremendous ROI for this project. Construction durations were shortened by using UAVs and ContextCapture to support calculating the number of earthworks required by seven-to-10 days per square kilometer, resulting in a RMB 310,000 savings for this calculation alone. Likewise, the immersive digital twin, used with ProStructures for advanced calculations, helped ensure that the delicate and highly sensitive pool walls were more easily constructed, saving the project an estimated RMB 2.3 million. Changing the mode of design and construction of rebar saved an additional RMB 1.71 million, while also shortening the construction schedule by 25 days. And, in construction, the immersive digital twin was used to educate the on-site teams, shortening construction by an additional 121 days due to improvements in efficiency, saving another RMB 1.27 million.
The success of this project has enabled CRSEB to transform the way it does business. Lei Huang, a senior executive with CRESB, said, “Based on the way we applied Bentley software, certain technological advancements in this corporate water environment protection project have been obtained. By combining project features in the current phase, our company will further promote the application of BIM technology.”
The results CRSEB achieved on this project have laid the groundwork for the engineering bureau to look for more opportunities to advance their digital maturity. This includes research and development in areas such as structural live-action modeling technologies to build intelligent construction sites, making multi-aspect data acquisition by combining various sensors and sharing information and realizing application of digital construction sites. By adopting BIM methodologies and industrializing their project delivery methods using immersive digital twins and Bentley technology, CSREB has built a foundation for future success.
Greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants have been a critical challenge for India and it is a challenge that needs to be addressed head on given the country’s increasing demand for electricity. For example, electricity consumption grew from 375.39 billion kilowatt hours in 2000 to 1.108 trillion kilowatt hours in 2018. Additionally, electric power generation grew from 529.12 billion kilowatt hours in 2000 to 1.311 trillion kilowatt hours in 2018. The aspiration for rapid economic growth leading to industrialization, accelerated urbanization, and mechanization of agriculture is responsible for this growth in demand.
As part of India’s growth in solar energy, Adani Mundra Solar PV Limited manufactures solar cells for the Indian market. To obtain successful operational and financial performance, Adani Mundra Solar PV’s 1-gigawatt solar PV cell manufacturing project requires the continuous and reliable production of ultra-pure water 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. Ultra-pure water (UPW) systems are often referred to as the “life blood” of modern solar cell production facilities. The cell products will encounter UPW on many occasions during their production cycle, and any disruption of service and/or “out-of-spec” water can seriously compromise their yield, costing perhaps millions of dollars in lost production.
Suez Water Technologies & Solutions (SWTS) is the worldwide industry leader in the UPW systems business to both the semiconductor and solar industries. SWTS’ patented UPW generation using membranes and filters produces 1-gigawatt-capacity PV cells and modules for solar power plants, enabling the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. Adani Mundra Solar PV contracted SWTS to design, engineer, procure, supply, erect, commission, and performance test a new solar PV manufacturing facility. The facility was required to produce 1,560 cubic meters per day in UPW production, plus 2,280 cubic meters per day in the UPW loop. This was made more complicated for SWTS because of the need to take influent flow from an existing 20 milliliters-per-day seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) plant, which has a high total-organic-carbon (TOC) -5.9 ppm, very high chlorides (380 ppm), and very low hardness/alkalinity, which would cause severe corrosion in carbon-steel and stainless-steel materials. As a result, this project required innovative, one-of-a-kind thinking in both materials, manufacturing techniques, and in new, improved design modeling and project delivery methodologies.
Using a variety of Bentley applications, including OpenPlant, AutoPIPE, Navigator, ProSteel, and STAAD, SWTS created and implemented a digital model for managing this project. From performing structural analysis of polypropylene (PP) tanks to performing stress analysis, performing detailed civil, concrete, and tank design, managing multidiscipline design reviews, and producing detailed bills of materials directly from the digital model, SWTS was able to revolutionize their digital workflows and leverage the digital DNA they have created. Moreover, remote offices were connected via Bentley’s Connected Data Environment (CDE), based on ProjectWise, to ensure that the latest version of drawings and deliverables were always shared by the customer and site teams.
SWTS realized significant ROI by implementing these technologies and techniques. Savings include approximately USD 70,000 through optimized pipe routings and reduced field rework and 30-percent savings in resource hours during the design modeling phase (USD 35,000).
Utilizing Bentley software also lessened the civil, structural, piping, and cable tray site execution time by 60 days, resulting in a flawless construction of civil foundations, concrete and steel structures, equipment, piping plus allied supports, cable tray, and instrumentation within the stipulated project schedule.
The CNY 23.6 billion Lipu-Yulin Expressway will run through Guilin, Guigang, and Yulin in Guangxi province and is an important section of G59, China’s national expressway network. Guangxi Transportation Design Group Co., Ltd., is responsible for the overall design and coordination of the project, as well as providing technical support for the construction unit. The large-scale project, which requires complex and comprehensive management, faces many challenges including long distances, large amounts of land requisition and demolition, and citizen-control factors that need to be considered in the planning phase. The main line of the project is 263.1 kilometers long and requires exceptional communication and coordination among teams, multiple disciplines, and public entities.
The expressway design includes several technically complex bridges, such as the Xiangsizhou Bridge, with a span of 450 meters and the largest-span, cable-stayed bridge in Guangxi province, and the Pingnansan Bridge, the largest span-arch bridge in the world under construction, with a span of 575 meters. The expressway also includes super-long tunnels, such as the Wenwei Tunnel, which runs 4,705 meters and is located in mountainous regions with rough terrain and poor geological conditions.
The BIM design team was required to determine how to build a full-factor scenario project model quickly and optimize the route plan. The team depended on Bentley software to enable the design, collaboration, and management across all teams while meeting contractual-scheduled requirements. Project goals include saving design time by 20 percent, limiting deviation between target cost and actual cost to 2 percent, and achieving a profit margin of 5 percent.
The BIM team used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in combination with ContextCapture to create large-scale, reality meshes for the project. The models were used to perform 3D analysis to ensure the safety clearance of equipment and structures and conduct site planning and optimize construction site space utilization to reach 95 percent optimization. Using OpenRoads, the team created 3D models for planning construction sites and temporary sites, arranging service areas, and selecting spoil ground to avoid wasting land resources, which saved land use by 5 percent and avoided 4,100 square meters of building demolition.
MicroStation was used to perform 3D parametric modeling, with ProStructures used to accurately model the steel structures; these applications identified problems and reduced design errors design rework to save 15 working days. OpenRoads and OpenBridge were used to perform 3D design of roads, bridges, and tunnels to quickly and accurately locate the structures, perform parametric modeling, and improve design efficiency by more than 200 percent. BIM 5D construction management was achieved using the project’s electronic sandbox system based on MicroStation to manage 3D content while combining the data with a web GIS to provide information browsing and sharing. ProjectWise was used to provide collaborative design across all parties and professions and reduced communication costs by CNY 400,000.
Combining Bentley technology with BIM methodologies, the design team was able to achieve economic savings as well as reduce staff input of design and construction management by 10 percent, which reduced resource hours by 30 percent and greatly improved the quality of construction, laying the foundation for timely and high-quality project completion.
Changhai Wang, BIM center director, Guangxi Communications Design Group Co., Ltd., said, “Using Bentley’s project team collaboration system leveraging ProjectWise, improved information sharing and communication among team members. Having the most updated information at our fingertips helped us reduce the number of meeting by 15 times
and communication and collaboration costs by more than CNY 400,000.”Nagpur, in the state of Maharashtra, India, is seeing growing economic activity. With motorized transport dominated by two-wheelers contributing to congestion, pollution, and accidents on its roads, Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation Limited (Maha Metro) is working hard to deliver a safe, reliable, efficient, affordable, commuter-friendly, and environmentally-sustainable rapid public transport system for the region.
When complete the Nagpur Metro project will be 41.7 kilometers in length and include 40 stations and two depots. While the current public transportation system only accounts for 10 percent of total trips, Nagpur Metro will provide first- and last-mile connectivity via feeder services that will include shuttle buses, battery-operated vehicles, pedestrian facilities, and bicycle-sharing schemes, enhancing accessibility for all classes of commuter.
The Government of India’s Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation conducted a study that concluded that of 564 large infrastructure projects implemented in India, 42 percent were delayed, and 31 percent had no definite time of delivery. With railway projects reportedly experiencing more than 95 percent cost overruns and 118 percent time overruns, Maha Metro knew it would encounter many challenges and needed a different approach. Opting to follow international best practices on the metro project, it took an asset-centric approach, one that would incorporate a common set of standards, workflows, and objectives from the planning stage and consider the whole lifecycle of the railway, including operations and maintenance.
The team at Maha Metro began with the definition of standards, processes, and workflows for inclusion in its digital project management platform based on Bentley’s OpenRail CDE solution. Having developed Employers Information Requirements (EIR) that referenced the PAS 1192 suite of British Standards, and mandated their use in all supply chain contracts, Maha Metro decided to set up an owner’s support office to assist with successful implementation. With the help of Bentley Systems, Maha Metro created a BIM academy to encourage adoption of its CDE, BIM compliance, and aid onboarding of the supply chain.
At present, Maha Metro’s CDE is home to around 12,000 3D models, drawings, and project-related documents. It provides an ongoing source of trusted information for the 22 design consulting companies, 15 contractors, and a consortium of five organizations that make up its general consultants, enabling seamless collaboration across 30 disciplines on the project.
Anticipated savings because of Maha Metro’s adoption of OpenRail CDE and this pioneering approach for the Indian rail market during design and construction include:
Maha Metro also has its eye on operational expenditure during the capital expenditure phase and has configured its CDE to record all engineered components, systems, locations, properties, specifications, and drawings. The CDE also helped Maha Metro procure vendor data, vendor manual, vendor drawings, bills of materials, and specifications. Lastly, through the CDE, Maha Metro could install or construct assets, including test data and inspection reports, that cover all of the lifecycle stages. When completed, this trusted source of information residing in the CDE will form the operational backbone of Nagpur Metro’s infrastructure for years to come, and it is expected to generate savings of around USD 222 million over a 25-year period.
“We are happy that we chose Bentley as the partner to realize our digital project management approach in successfully executing our project from concept to operations. The team’s innovative use of Bentley technology to manage design, construction, and handover has already been acknowledged by other large infrastructure owner-operators as an important first step to introducing a new culture for delivering rail projects in India,” said Brijesh Kumar Dixit, managing director, Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation Limited.As part of a coordinated development plan, Zhongguancun will integrate the resources of Beijing, Tianjin, and Zhongguancun to build a new science and technology city. The CNY 2.2 billion project includes the design and construction of roads, utility pipelines, a 174,000-square-meter park, and green roadsides spanning 477,000 square meters. Given the large geographic span, wide construction area, and tight construction timeline, the overall project consultant CCCC Water Transportation Planning Design Institute (CCCC) implemented a collaborative BIM process to coordinate the many engineering disciplines to deliver the new digital city.
In keeping with the idea of a truly digital city that incorporates a municipality’s needed services, the project scope encompasses a wide range of utility, transportation, and environmental disciplines. Included within the project scope is the construction of 16 roads with a length of approximately 30 kilometers; a layout of rain and sewage diversion pipelines with a length of approximately 78 kilometers; water supply pipelines with a length of approximately 40 kilometers; intermediate water pipelines with a length of approximately 26 kilometers; gas pipelines with a length of approximately 43 kilometers; thermal power pipelines with a length of approximately 40 kilometers; power pipelines with a length of approximately 45 kilometers; and telecommunication pipelines with a length of approximately 39 kilometers. Additionally, the project team is responsible for designing and constructing a city park with an area of approximately 174,000 square meters. The roadside will be green with an area of approximately 477,000 square meters, and the river and water environment will be comprehensively improved. CCCC acts as the overall consultant and implementer of the BIM process on this project. The organization is responsible for the creation and application of BIM technology in the design, construction, and operation and maintenance of models in all stages. CCCC is responsible for setting up a BIM project management platform, building project digital assets, and assisting the construction of the regional smart park and smart city.
Using Bentley’s integrated BIM applications, including ContextCapture, LumenRT, MicroStation, Navigator, OpenBridge Modeler, OpenRoads, ProjectWise, ProStructures the team generated a comprehensive 3D model of the entire city. CCCC identified and remedied more than 200 collision points, optimizing design and reducing costly rework. Performing construction simulation facilitated construction management, shortening the construction period by 64 days to save CNY 6.6 million in costs. ProjectWise provided a connected data environment to streamline workflows and improve design efficiency. Integrating ContextCapture to generate a reality mesh from UAV terrain data collected on site enabled the team to facilitate earthworks planning, saving approximately CNY 40 million.
To stimulate the economic development of Kunming City and the surrounding region, Yunnan Yunling Engineering Cost Consultation (YYECC) was charged to create a rapid transportation system in the city’s southeastern section. Part of a larger urban revitalization project worth RMB 90 billion, this RMB 9.914 billion project included a total construction mileage of 65.48 kilometers, consisting of roads, bridges, tunnels, and urban underground pipe corridors. As the BIM management organization, YYECC was responsible for coordinating industrialized and automated processes for data transfer and sharing through a connected data environment leveraging Bentley’s ProjectWise.
Leveraging a CDE based on the collaboration and management capabilities of ProjectWise, combined with the engineering and design capabilities of other Bentley applications, YYECC developed a comprehensive and owner-supported BIM methodology. The process was designed to ensure that information was shared, but it also established the digital DNA required for future decision making by the owner-operator. Because this project will run for 20 years, and include more than 25 different participating organizations, a robust BIM process that is supported by enabling technology is paramount to success.
LumenRT’s visualization capabilities enhanced the appearance of the model and allowed the team to share simulations with the executors and directors of the project so that they could better understand the progress of construction. The process improved visualization efficiency by 70 percent.
Additionally, YYECC organized and supported the creation of a sophisticated digital twin model of the project, covering the entire 20-square-kilometer project area. This process resulted in a 90 percent coverage of the entire project area, with 3,650 design and test drawings, plus management of process standards, cost information, and project supervision data numbering in the hundreds of copies.Â
Through its robust use of BIM methodologies to industrialize the project execution and delivery, YYECC has achieved significant ROI. Where in previous projects, four full-time employees were required for managing approvals of cost submittals, only one person is now required to accomplish the same scope. Additional benefits included reducing the review and approval process from one week to one hour, lowering the deficiency of acquired early-stage materials by 40 percent, improving information quality on site by over 30 percent, enhancing design efficiency by 25 percent, and reducing design drawing errors by 60 percent. These tremendous benefits were recognized by the government as well, which has issued numerous citations to the project and has introduced a new directive to other projects in the region to adopt similar BIM methodology and technologies.
YYECC already sees benefits of their industrialized project delivery. By creating a robust CDE, YYECC says that the digital twin model will serve as the basis for not only better construction projects, but also a key factor for improving digital urban management for future generations in Kunming City.
Chao Li, deputy director, Yunnan Yunling Engineering Cost Consultation, said, “Bentley’s ProjectWise decreased the time it took to approve materials used on the project by 40 percent, and giving the project team the ability to access information in the field improved information integrity by 30 percent.”Founded in 1968, Andeavor is a highly integrated marketing, logistics, and refining company, operating in 18 states in the United States and employing more than 14,000 employees. The company operates 10 refineries and 7,500 miles of pipeline in the mid-continent and western United States with a combined capacity of about 1.2 million barrels per day. Andeavor works to create a safer and cleaner future with reliable transportation fuel solutions.
As an owner of many refineries with an ongoing portfolio of capital projects, Andeavor used a brownfield environmental upgrade and expansion project of an oil refinery located in the state of Washington to understand how to benefit from Advanced Work Packaging (AWP) to achieve real benefits. AWP has been published as a best practice by the Construction Industry Institute (CII) since 2015, and the construction industry is gradually beginning to adopt this approach.
The three-phase refinery upgrade project on which Andeavor is using AWP will expand the NHT reactor to process 46,000 barrels of naphtha per day and involves the installation of a new isomerization unit to increase the amount of octane available in the refinery. The project will also include installing underground pipes, earthworks, and foundations, as well as nine modules fabricated overseas and all the interconnecting and tie-in components.
Andeavor used ConstructSim and Navigator with Bentley’s outcome-based AWP best practices, and Team Builder Solutions, a Bentley Channel Partner, customized on-site implementation to ensure data reliability for project controls and transparency regarding installation work packages (IWPs). ConstructSim enabled progress audits to help keep contractors focused on key deliverables and maintain schedule adherence, avoiding progress over-reporting.
Not only did the project team overcome many challenges (most of them cultural) with sustainable and practical work processes, it was able to measure and show tangible business benefits. For example, increasing time on tools from the industry average of 34 percent to over 40 percent saved 4,000 craft labor resource hours. Significant cost savings were also achieved by reducing the cost of construction planners building the IWPs manually, dropping from an average of 10 hours per IWP to three hours per IWP using ConstructSim, saving more than 1,000 resource hours in construction planning alone. The time that was saved also led to savings in material handling and crew mobilization costs. Other outcomes included improvements in safety, measurement, communication, and productivity.
Douglas Hill, CEO and principal project consultant, Team Builder Solutions, said, “This project proved the value of Advanced Work Packaging for supporting Andeavor’s desire to improve their capital projects program. Andeavor’s Project Management Team embraced the best practice paired with a customized implementation process. Together with Bentley’s expertise in its solutions and education through the Construction Academy, the team was able to develop an approach that will enable them to replicate this success.”This project won the 2018 Construction Industry Institute Implementation Award (https://www.construction-institute.org/blog/2018/july-2018/andeavor-receives-cii-implementation-award).
Oman Gas Company (OGC) is the principal gas transportation company of the Sultanate of Oman established in 2000. OGC operates a 2,500-kilometer high-pressure gas transmission network that runs the length and breadth of the Sultanate with annual gas transmission volumes of around 21.549 billion cubic meters. Other facilities include three compressor stations and 38 gas supply stations. The majority of the Sultanate’s industrial sectors, from power and desalination plants to fertilizer, methanol, petrochemicals, refineries, steel, and cement plants, rely on OGC to deliver the gas for their operations.
OGC adopted an advanced reliability and integrity program that ensures production availability to meet its customer demands and achieve its goal of becoming “a world-class midstream gas value chain company.” The organization has digitized its reliability and maintenance program by implementing Bentley’s AssetWise Asset Reliability solution. To reduce human intervention and avoid human fault analysis, the system leverages the inherent capabilities of AssetWise Asset Reliability to automate several processes including:
The software utilizes these inputs to calculate reliability and availability of an individual asset based on an exponential reliability model. The weekly calculations are based on series and parallel configurations, which were previously performed monthly by a dedicated reliability engineer using Excel spreadsheets.
The system introduces digital workflows using handheld devices for routine operator duties to bridge the disconnect between engineers and field operators by mapping trends, monitoring operational parameters, and providing necessary technical support remotely. It also ensures that operational key performance indicators (KPIs) are achieved by monitoring the compliance status regularly.
Bentley’s AssetWise Asset Reliability solution triggers an alert and email notification as soon as any value is out of range. With this technology, OGC has calculated a significant increase in reliability performance. This calculation is based on failure reduction against Mean Time to Repair and Cost of Lost Production Opportunity, which greatly impacts revenues and profits.
Fahmi Reza, head of reliability and condition monitoring, Oman Gas Company, said, “The auto-alert and email notification features of Bentley’s AssetWise Asset Reliability are enabling us to improve our reliability growth at a significant rate of about 9 percent in a year.”Telecommunication infrastructure owners have some of the most widely distributed and remote assets to build, maintain, and repair. With approximately 27,000 distributed sites and 6,000 communication towers under management, Telstra is Australia’s leading telecommunication service provider. Traditional inspection methods of towers involve manually taking photographs and measurements. This requires workers climbing on the towers, usually in remote areas, making the process dangerous, inefficient, costly, and time-consuming.
In 2017, Telstra engaged SiteSee to perform automated as-built and condition assessment reports by applying machine learning and object recognition technology to 3D reality meshes. The objective of the AUD 66,000 project was to assess the suitability and accuracy of SiteSee’s technology and provide a business benefits analysis for performing a portfolio-wide rollout.
Creating 3D models of communication towers using reality modeling applications is a challenging task and requires specific workflows, camera settings, flight plans, and a sound understanding of photogrammetry principles. As a recognized reality modeling solutions provider of Bentley Systems, SiteSee provided reality modeling training and support to Telstra’s UAV teams and preferred contractors tasked with performing data capture. Captured imagery was then uploaded to SiteSee’s platform for processing and analysis. SiteSee’s web-accessible solution achieved 98 percent object recognition accuracy of all installed equipment with a dimensional accuracy of +-10 millimeters over 50 meters. As-built information was then automatically assessed against Telstra’s database of records to deliver actionable information for multiple department groups and third-party stakeholders.
To enable SiteSee’s object recognition technology and position elements accurately within a 3D environment, SiteSee utilized Bentley’s ContextCapture. Previous attempts using other photogrammetry solutions had resulted in low-quality 3D meshes. However, Bentley’s ContextCapture produced highly accurate 3D reality meshes when flown using SiteSee’s proprietary capture methodology. From an environmental perspective, SiteSee’s technology is minimizing site visits, mobilization of access equipment, and the need for tower climbs by up to 60 percent. From a safety perspective, SiteSee’s additional value-add electromagnetic energy (EME) simulation is improving radiation compliance for carriers with cellular installations on towers in populated areas. Using Bentley’s reality modeling technology, SiteSee’s EME assessments provide as-built transparency on antenna placements, which allows engineers to make accurate EME assessments without physically climbing towers.
For wireless network engineering design teams, SiteSee’s web-accessible reality mesh and object recognition technology reduced travel and design time by a minimum of eight hours. Through development of an automated UAV application, data is captured in less than 20 minutes. SiteSee was also able to identify damaged equipment, which caused the tower to repeatedly drop coverage. By notifying the appropriate departments, SiteSee was instrumental in returning service to customers.
Utilizing off-the-shelf UAV equipment and cloud-based processing and hosting services, SiteSee’s condition assessment and tower auditing solution is highly scalable and easily reproducible. When compared against traditional tower assessment solutions requiring teams of engineers, climbers, or access equipment to lift assessors into place, SiteSee provides improved accuracy and transparency at less than 25 percent the cost of a standard inspection. Moreover, easily accessing up-to-date, as-built information and making more informed decisions allows clients to benefit from reduced site visits for planning and design works.
SiteSee’s unique application of machine learning has already been recognized by multiple third parties, including Spar3D. SiteSee’s globally applicable solution has also been recognized by TowerXchange, with SiteSee’s co-founder Lachlan Crane being awarded the under 35 Rising Star award for new technology. Crane summarized Bentley’s contribution to SiteSee’s success by saying, “Bentley’s ContextCapture provided the foundation technology stack for SiteSee to deliver premium web-accessible 3D mesh models.”The London sewerage system was designed in the Victorian era to serve a population of 4 million people. There are now more than 8 million people in London, and this growth has put significant strain on the system, causing it to spill millions of tons of sewage into the tidal section of the River Thames each year. This happens about 50 times during a year. The Thames Tideway Project will reduce these occurrences to about four a year. The project has been divided into three contracts, East, Central, and West with a total value exceeding GBP 4 billion. There are many challenges facing a project of this scale, from marine construction works in the River Thames, creating a new profile to the river walls, to solving design issues where large gas mains are present in proximity to the existing rivers walls. Therefore, it is critical that such services are protected during construction works.
AECOM, part of a joint venture consisting of Ferrovial Agroman and Laing O’Rourke (‘Flo’), is the main designer on the Central Contract to the Main Works Contractor. AECOM undertook to host the Central Contract on behalf of Flo using Bentley Systems’ Connected Data Environment based on ProjectWise for its ability to manage engineering data and its scalability from small to large projects. Using workflows, defined document coding, and managed workspaces, AECOM has delivered a controlled and secure CDE to manage this highly complex project. ProjectWise, as the hub of the CDE and leveraging the established project standards, provides a central repository for all project data produced by each stakeholder involved on this contract. This ensures that they are working to a common standard, including temporary and permanent works.
MicroStation and OpenBuildings Designer act as the deliverables format for drawings and models, as defined by the main client. AECOM adopted these applications because of their compatibility with each other and with ProjectWise. AECOM also used Bentley Rebar, Navigator, Pointools, Descartes, gINT, Bentley Facilities Manager, and ContextCapture. Using these interoperable applications ensured limited risk and avoided the need for additional processes.
AECOM has already realized numerous benefits and savings through the adoption of a digital twin and a CDE. iModels were produced from the Design Master Model on a weekly and monthly basis and available for all stakeholders to see the development of each site as it progressed. The project team used the iModels to carry out multidiscipline clash checks that were sent to the design and modeling teams to resolve. The project team also used iModels during the internal design review process. Using the project digital twin and CDE also resulted in “non-engineering” savings, including increased IT security and reliability, better access and editing control, improved automatic PDF generation, and reduced travel costs for project members by enabling real-time access anywhere, at any time.
Barry Jones, associate director and BIM manager with AECOM, said, “Bentley ProjectWise provided the controlled environment in which to build a virtual representation of the assets of eight individual sites, comprising multiple disciplines, producing more than 140,000 documents from more than 40 stakeholders, consisting of more than 1,000 users in a coordinated fashion through the design phase and into construction and as-constructed in preparation for a handback to the client.”The City of Agra is an International Heritage City and a major tourist destination. It is situated on the banks of the Yamuna River, which is fed perennially by Himalayan glaciers and has been a source of Agra’s drinking water for centuries. However, rapid growth in urbanization and construction of irrigation networks has substantially reduced fresh water inflow into the downstream stretches of the river.
Cities situated along the river, including Delhi, discharge a large quantity of partially treated and untreated sewage and industrial waste into the river throughout the year. The Uttar Pradesh Jal Nigam is a government corporation under the Uttar Pradesh state government that provides statewide water supply services. Realizing the social and economic significance of providing an adequate potable water supply to the populace and to industries, U.P. Jal Nigam initiated an improvement scheme for water supply in Agra City.
The Agra Water Supply System draws water from the Yamuna River to supply the city. It serves about 65 percent of the present population with potable water through a complex water supply system network. The distribution system is considerably old, as evidenced by high Unaccounted for Water (UFW), which is suspected to be mainly caused by physical losses due to the system’s poor condition. The operation of the existing system is considered intermittent supply, running six-to-eight hours per day on average. Using Bentley’s WaterGEMS and STAAD.Pro applications, NJS Engineers India P Limited created and analyzed a comprehensive model of the entire water network. The target outcome was to identify gaps in the current system and to create a forward-looking performance model that would enable U.P. Jal Nigam to predict water supply for decades to come, while moving from an intermittent supply system to a 24x7 system.
Using Bentley’s WaterGEMS and STAAD.Pro applications, the NJS team conducted numerous studies and analyses of the existing and future network upgrades. Creating a real-time, shareable GIS-enabled model of the network, U.P. Jal Nigam’s operations teams can now monitor inventory in real-time, instantly reducing operating and production costs. Through the detailed analysis model, future upgrades to the water network will ensure 100 percent water supply to the region by 2030, 24 hours a day. Studies also found several undersized pipes in the existing network, which can now be prioritized for replacement to ensure the future network is fully capable of meeting the increased demand, while covering 100 percent of Agra City and regional inhabitants. Using the GIS-enabled model into operations will identify problems in the network faster and shorten the time to make decisions on new connections or maintenance via a single collaboration platform. These benefits are in addition to the INR 360 million saved in the design and construction phases of the projects as a result of having more accurate models.
The City of Agra, now celebrating the 350th year of the Taj Mahal, faces a wide range of urban physical and social problems that threaten to irreparably damage its valuable tourist trade as well as the health and welfare of its citizens. The project, when completed, will provide safe and reliable water supply 24x7 in Agra and improve the living conditions of all residents in the concerned areas.
“The measurable or projected results achieved using Bentley technology included reducing the number of large-scale drawings by 35 percent, saving 300 resource hours, and 60 resource months during construction,” said Rohit Dembi, ITES Head at NJS Engineers.Bankura is an administrative unit in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is part of Medinipur—one of the state’s five administrative divisions. The Damodar River flows in the northern part of the Bankura district and separates it from the major part of the Burdwan district. The district has been described as the “connecting link between the plains of Bengal on the east and the Chota Nagpur plateau on the west.” West Bengal Bankura has been selected for this water distribution improvement project by the Public Health and Environmental Engineering Department (PHED) of West Bengal. PHED is headquartered at Kolkata for Multi-Village Bulk Water Supply Projects and is jointly funded by PHED and the Asian Development Bank.
This project was limited to four of the eight blocks in the Bankura District: Mejhia, Gangajalghati, Indpur, and Taldangra, and is of critical importance to the region, as less than 4 percent of the 359,172 habitants in the 600 villages contained within the four blocks have a piped drinking water supply. The aim of this project is to connect the remaining 96 percent of the population through developing new water systems to meet supply, while rehabilitating the existing, aged water system to continue supplying existing customers. The scope of the project calls for adding 4,000 kilometers of new pipeline to the existing 100 kilometers of pipeline, leveraging a single hydraulic model covering more than 50 unique scenarios. DTK Hydronet Solutions used Bentley’s WaterGEMS to perform the design engineering on this INR 12.38 billion project to improve the lives of more than 1 million inhabitants in the region.
Projects of similar scope had required four months of effort to create the initial hydraulic model. Using WaterGEMS, DTK Hydronet Solutions’ engineers accomplished this new model in one month, saving 75 percent in project resource-hour costs. WaterGEMS’ sophisticated modeling capabilities enabled the team to model the existing network and develop proposed roadmaps for the new network in a single GIS model, including assessing more than 39,000 junctions within the network.
Village population and density projections were included to help future-proof the design. This solution enabled the team to create its initial model of the entire network (existing and proposed new) in just five days. Difficult topography assessments, changes in transmission routes, optimal scheduling of pumping operations and energy-to-cost calculations were all performed on the model as it was revised to yield the final proposed design. In only 25 days, not only was the initial design created, optimized, and finalized, but multiple worst-case scenarios, high-demand analysis, and other “what-if” scenarios were assessed that could not have been performed outside of the single hydraulic model in WaterGEMS.
Devashir Karve, water engineering consultant at DTK Hydronet Solutions, said, “Bentley WaterGEMS enabled ‘conceptioneering’ in this 4,000 kilometer-long, multi-village rural water supply’s single hydraulic model to benefit about 1 million villagers in India. Design evaluation and analysis was efficiently done in an optimal timeframe of 25 man-days making the project the first of its kind!”The South-to-North Water Diversion Project is a major foundational strategic project to alleviate the severe shortage of water resources in northern China, especially in the capital of Beijing, to optimize the allocation of water resources, and to support the development of Beijing and Tianjin. The Beijing Institute of Water was tasked with this CNY 3.4 billion project to support the Hexi Branch sub-project in creating construction drawings of multiple pumping stations, water transmission lines, and water treatment plants.
Leveraging BIM methodologies to manage the design and information management, the entire system was designed using 3D modeling and Bentley’s ProjectWise as the central collaboration environment. From these design models, construction drawings and secondary design analyses were conducted using MicroStation for annotation and rebar assessment, greatly improving the efficiency of creating detailed drawings. In addition, the project team used Descartes to create surface digital engineering models and building models, allowing the team to track construction completion digitally, rather than relying on paper queries for information.
Bentley’s HAMMER was used to analyze and calculate the hydraulic transition between the pumping stations and to calculate pressure distribution along the path in case of pump shutdown, ensuring that the system can operate safely under any circumstance. Three-dimensional geological models of the entire site using MicroStation resulted in 60 percent faster modeling times compared to previous 2D methodologies. This process also enabled the direct creation of a complex pipeline mesh model to calculate the shortest clear directions to optimize the design and protection of various pipelines. This innovative, first-of-a-kind approach saved 80 percent in design time compared to previous 2D methods.
By combining full lifecycle management concepts, the Hexi branch project carried out design work of intelligent water in the initial design phase. From this intelligent water design, the project has developed a strong technical basis to support operation of the project through leveraging 3D collaborative design results, building reliable model information archives and enabling the project to fully realize digital design, digital construction management, and digital operations.
Xin Yin, chief engineer of the Information Center for the Institute, stated, “This project is not only an example of 3D application in water supply engineering for an urban long-distance tunnel, but it is also a successful 3D practice in design, construction, and management. Taking this project as a symbol, we will lead 3D design trends in long-distance, super-large-pipe water transmission engineering, ushering in a new era in the industry in which 3D collaborative design is widely applied to the field of water conservancy design.”The Cha’anling-Ziaojiazhou region in China’s Zianning District is a highly developed region and home to 350,000 consumers of electricity. Historically, the region has experienced unreliable power supply, making consumer delivery unstable. Cha’anling-Ziaojiazhou is highly urban, with complex topology complicating the task of adding new power lines. Moreover, major highways that cross the region complicate the ability to add new transmission lines without impacting commercial and residential traffic. Further complicating potential improvements, the region borders the flood diversion area of the Yangtze River, meaning that potential flooding around future towers must be accounted for from the beginning. These factors mean that finding a solution to deliver improved power requires a new approach.
The Hubei Provincial Electric Power Survey and Design Institute was tasked with designing and delivering a new 220-kilovolt transmission line to provide power for a newly constructed substation in Xiaojiazhou. This transmission line is a significant step for improving the lives of the 350,000 daily users in Jiayu County. However, the obstacles that faced the Design Institute are significant. To solve these challenges, the engineering teams began by creating a fully immersive digital twin of the affected regions using ContextCapture. Modeling the entire region, including multiple cities and highways, established an immersive digital baseline from which the design studies could be made. Leveraging Bentley’s OpenBuildings Designer, Bentley Substation, and STAAD.Pro, Hubei’s engineers created a digital engineering model of the transmission line, which could be added to and combined with the immersive digital twin to visualize the new line and identify potential obstacles and issues. Analyses of the design could be performed and optimized to ensure that the new towers were structurally sound, to minimize interference with the urban and traffic areas, and to reduce design time compared to previous methods. The resulting design, leveraging Bentley’s iModel technology, was fully deployable into a three-dimensional earth view, ensuring that multiple stakeholders could review the planned route and design.
Implementing a completely digital workflow combined with immersive models has paid significant dividends during the design phase. In addition to increasing online collaboration, planned design time was reduced by 12 percent, checking time by 16 percent, and planned field work by five days. The design saved six houses in the region from being demolished, while ensuring that each of the major crossing areas were optimally designed. Design optimizations resulted in savings of material costs, with the new tower designs reducing weights by 1.2 percent and the total route length decreasing by half of a kilometer.
Through increased collaboration with contractors and design departments, design reviews to reduce conflicts between towers, lines, and the environment were optimized, reducing future rework and in-field problems. Using a digital design and collaboration model, the Hubei Provincial Electric Power Survey and Design Institute realized savings of more than CNY 6 million on a CNY 32.21 million project. The Hubei Provincial Electric Power Survey and Design Institute’s transformation to a digital environment has resulted in a design that not only saves money but also improves the lives of the residents in the Xianning District while preserving the environment.
Liang Zhang, an engineer with POWERCHINA Hubei Electric Engineering Corporation Limited, said, “The innovative use of Bentley software for the design of overhead electric transmission lines reduced design time by approximately 40 hours through multidiscipline collaboration. The full electric transmission line pole tower layout model, supported by the reality model, reduced the checking and auditing time by 32 hours. About 12 percent of the total design time and 16 percent of the checking time were reduced.”
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