At the 2022 Year in Infrastructure Conference , Bentley Systems, Incorporated, an engineering and infrastructure software company, has announced Bentley Infrastructure Cloud, its combination of enterprise systems spanning the end-to-end lifecycle and value chain of the world’s infrastructure.
Powered by Bentley’s iTwin Platform and infrastructure blueprints, and therefore seamlessly integrating with Bentley’s engineering applications, Bentley Infrastructure Cloud will enable better creation, delivery and ongoing operation of better infrastructure through end-to-end digital twins and perennials.
Bentley Infrastructure Cloud encompasses ProjectWise for project delivery, SYNCHRO for construction, and AssetWise for asset operations. Today, these enterprise systems use digital twin technologies, powered by iTwin, to open up data contained in engineering files through automated mapping and intrinsic to Bentley infrastructure blueprints. By advancing these enterprise systems to become fundamentally data-centric without disrupting file-based workflows, Bentley Infrastructure Cloud offers user organizations significant opportunities to improve collaboration, productivity and quality.
Bentley ‘s infrastructure blueprints are open and extensible, and are now linked to reality modeling and IoT devices, and incorporate carbon calculations and subsurface data. The rich data representation of Bentley’s infrastructure schematics lends itself well to exporting Industry Foundation Classes. The ability to share data evenly and enrich it throughout its lifecycle helps engineering companies and owner operators create and extract more value from their engineering data.
The potential for a unifying, cloud-based solution across the infrastructure engineering lifecycle arises from the institutionalized limitations of fragmented information flows, which have impeded connections, feedback, analysis, reuse, and knowledge transfer. Bentley Infrastructure Cloud comprises a data-centric, always-on, always-current, always-accessible, federated environment that persists and relates engineering data throughout design, construction, and operations. Information mobility and semantic continuity across traditional boundaries through the Bentley Infrastructure Cloud will help accelerate, among other advancements, modular design and design for constructability, and performance-based design.
Bentley Senior Vice President, Enterprise Systems Ken Adamson said, “The Bentley Infrastructure Cloud represents our commitment to connecting everyone and everything in the infrastructure engineering value chain and broader project ecosystems. Infrastructure professionals deserve a perennial environment of digital twins for data they can trust and act on. I believe that Bentley Systems is uniquely positioned to meet this requirement because of the combined breadth of our ProjectWise, SYNCHRO and AssetWise enterprise systems, the intrinsic fidelity of our engineering software and our commitment to openness, including our unique determination to semantically integrate the full range of relevant engineering file formats. The iTwin Platform,by becoming the robust foundation to unify all of our software development, it has proven to be up to this challenge”.
ProjectWise, Powered by iTwin
Bentley Systems has also introduced major enhancements to ProjectWise to extend its scope of work from ongoing engineering work to full digital delivery, complementing sequential file-based project workflows with mobility and information-centric analysis. data through in all projects :
Through new project portfolio and program management capabilities , ProjectWise users can now apply engineering fidelity-level analysis across all projects, learn from and reuse rich project data, and retain knowledge to improve quality and efficiency of future projects; and
Through new digital twin capabilities , ProjectWise users can perform interdisciplinary design reviews and advanced design validation to improve the effectiveness and quality of their projects, and increase the richness of their digital products for construction and operations, so to position their businesses for transformational digital services beyond delivery.
Powered by iTwin:
ProjectWise leverages iTwin Capture to integrate reality modeling data, increasingly the norm, to capture and monitor the digital context of projects, geospatially coordinated with engineering data;
ProjectWise leverages Bentley infrastructure schemas to semantically align project file data across multiple disciplines for comprehensive design reviews, and across projects to understand dependencies, and to reuse datasets, including for machine learning, to develop proprietary analytics;
ProjectWise will leverage the iTwin Experience to deliver immersive visibility into project digital twins, ensuring quality and improving performance;
ProjectWise 4D Design Review , powered by iTwin, allows users to securely share large and complex models across their entire design ecosystem, regardless of authoring applications. Reviewers can take virtual tours, query model information and review embedded property data using a simple web browser. A streamlined interface makes cross-disciplinary review of 2D and 3D models easier and more accessible, and allows reviewers to see who changed what, and when, through 4D visualization;
Advanced Design Validation , powered by iTwin, includes 3D digital workflows, integration with Bentley’s OpenRoads and third-party applications, and AI/ML-enhanced visualization, enabling simulation of the driver experience to validate designs and ensure requirements are met. are taken care of;
The ProjectWise Components Center is a cloud-based digital component library and management service, with direct integration with engineering applications, promotes standardization, automation and object reuse to deliver projects faster and more reliably. Now, engineering companies can leverage data from one project to another, capture lessons learned, create reusable components, and truly industrialize their project delivery experience; and
Digital Delivery capabilities leverage digital workflows to automate and manage the creation, exchange, and revision of contract products, including PDFs and Industry Foundation Classes, as well as digital twins. ProjectWise users can avoid wasted time manually assembling and shipping packages, reduce risk by gaining visibility and traceability into deliverables workflows, and automatically maintain a comprehensive audit trail.
Powered by iTwin and within the Bentley Infrastructure Cloud, ProjectWise for Digital Delivery increases engineering firms’ opportunities while minimizing their risks, improving project performance and quality assurance. The infrastructure digital twins created in the design phase can be valuable to owner-operators as additional project deliverables, including the recurring services of engineering firms as “digital integrators” for data quality and security, ownership analysis and monitoring.
Lori Hufford, Vice President of Engineering Collaboration at Bentley Systems, commented, “Today’s engineering companies face unprecedented challenges in delivering more and better projects despite dwindling talent, a retiring workforce and the loss of institutional knowledge. Now, by leveraging the iTwin Platform, we are able to build ProjectWise beyond the ongoing engineering work for one project at a time, being used across all projects to maximize insights, learnings and reusability, and for the machine learning. ProjectWise users already have a rich design experience embedded in their ProjectWise files. Now as part of the Bentley Infrastructure Cloud, ProjectWise can drive a much-needed shift in efficiency,effectiveness and transformation of engineering companies”.
AssetWise, Asset Health Monitoring Solutions, powered by iTwin
Finally, Bentley also announced the availability of new asset-specific solutions, powered by iTwin, that leverage iTwin Experience , iTwin Capture , and iTwin IoT to provide real-time asset health monitoring.
The AssetWise Bridge Monitoring solution transforms traditional bridge inspections into a modern, digital workflow. By flying drones and using iTwin Capture to create a 3D digital twin of the bridge, inspections can be conducted virtually, avoiding costly and dangerous field trips, while leveraging expert knowledge remotely and leveraging AI/ML to Automatically identify and classify defects. Information is made available to stakeholders throughout the workflow through the iTwin experience. Inspection data needed to correct problems can be seamlessly delivered to maintenance, design, and construction to create substantial savings.
The AssetWise Dam Monitoring solution is designed for engineering companies to offer digital services to dam operators who are modernizing their safety programs, reducing risk and meeting increasing regulatory requirements. The next solution will provide unified access to sensor data and can be deployed without the need for specialized technicians. Users can embed sensor data into any digital twin for a contextual view of real-time data and associated metrics.
Cory Baldwin, Vice President, Infrastructure IoT at Bentley Systems, said: “We want to enable engineering companies to become digital integrators for the infrastructure digital twins they create in the project delivery phase, and to curate performance digital twins for operators themselves. To accelerate these opportunities, engineering companies can now get started quickly with iTwin Capture, iTwin Experience, iTwin IoT and our AssetWise monitoring cloud solutions, ready to add their own analysis programs and asset-specific services, with your brand”.
AssetWise Bridge Monitoring and Dam Monitoring solutions are in Early Access.
Bentley Infrastructure Cloud Availability Bentley
Chief Product Officer Michael Campbell concluded, “We are working closely with engineering companies and asset owners, and we clearly understand that they want innovation without disruption. With Bentley Infrastructure Cloud, users of ProjectWise, SYNCHRO and AssetWise accelerate your generational leap to digital twins, but don’t disrupt your existing workflows for engineering collaboration, construction, and asset performance management. Best of all, your existing projects and asset files are the stepping stone to your data-centric future”.
