Fills the Technology Gaps in Integrated Project Delivery, Between Design Engineering and the Construction Workface

LONDON — (BUSINESS WIRE) — October 29, 2013 — The Year in Infrastructure 2013 Conference – 29 October 2013 – Bentley Systems, Incorporated, the leading company dedicated to providing comprehensive software solutions for sustaining infrastructure, today announced that its forthcoming ProjectWise Construction Work Package Server, the first commercial off-the-shelf system for managing the lifecycle of construction work packages, has been shaped and is now being validated by leading engineering, procurement, and construction firms through their participation in Bentley’s early access program. The software is scheduled for commercial release in early 2014.

ProjectWise Construction Work Package Server uniquely “completes the reach” for construction information mobility by spanning the conspicuous software and process gaps between engineering content and workface planning. The importance of finally addressing and improving construction work packaging information flows was confirmed in the annual survey of priorities of the global project delivery officers of leading EPCs and EPCMs at the Bentley Project Delivery Forum held last month in Sonoma, Calif., U.S.A. The 33 attending executives ranked initiatives related to work packaging as highest on the scales of meriting their “critical and urgent” attention, and on which they would most like to focus for better project delivery performance. McGraw Hill Construction’s just-released SmartMarket Report on Construction Information Mobility underscored the pervasive breadth of this opportunity, indicating that, to date, barely half of the contractors surveyed track such information flows even within their own firms, with only 20 percent tracking information flows such as work packages, externally.

The software’s innovative capabilities serve as a timely response to the Construction Industry Institute’s (CII’s) call for “advanced work packaging” to become an industry best practice for defining the flow of information exchange between engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning, and handover. In the July 2013 Research Team (RT) 272 report (by what CII describes as its largest and best-credentialed task force ever) Advanced Work Packaging: Design through Workface Execution, CII includes a case study that assesses the value of Advanced Work Packaging as enabling a 10 percent reduction in total installed cost, with increased safety, in comparison to typical practice today. The key is an integrated approach spanning and connecting discipline-and-system-oriented Engineering Work Packages (EWPs), through geospatially defined 3D Construction Work Packages (CWPs), into component-level Installation Work Packages (IWPs), with pervasive change management enabled to cope with inevitable project realities.

CEO Greg Bentley (having been inducted into the U.S. National Academy of Construction on October 20, 2013) said, “The timing is auspicious for our major new construction offering, as we are now bringing to market what I believe to be the only software that can enable the new recommendations, and consequent project performance improvements, of CII RT 272 for Advanced Work Packaging. The addition of Construction Work Package Server extends the reach of ProjectWise functionality all the way through ConstructSim workface planning, made possible by leveraging our i-model deliverables and our eB/Information Manager (eB/IM) to maintain the relationships and changes at the level of construction component instances, across EWPs, CWPs, IWPs, and related enterprise systems for procurement and crafts. And I think only Bentley Systems could make this work for projects that start with our own design tools or others – including SmartPlant 3D and/or PDMS – in any combination.”

He added, “By addressing construction work packaging this comprehensively, projects can now go beyond merely ‘visualization for statusing’ to ‘proactively progressing,’ and, hence, from schedule simulation to schedule improvement. With Construction Work Packaging Server and, in conjunction with Bentley Navigator and ConstructSim, we complete the reach of ProjectWise from ‘Workhorse for Work Packaging’ to ‘Powerhouse for Project Performance.’ Connected by Bentley CONNECT cloudservices and our field apps, these comprehensive new offerings will complete the reach of consumerization-enabled information mobility, to accelerate the ongoing and important industrialization of infrastructure construction.”

Commenting on his EPCM firm’s early access experiences with ProjectWise Construction Work Package Server, Terry Erhart, Global Construction Processes & Technology Director at Hatch, said, “ProjectWise Construction Work Package Server will assist the project team to meet its scheduled dates, and will provide timely project status that will increase Construction Management staff efficiency, will reduce man-hours, both in the home office and at the site, and will assist in improving overall field productivity.”

ProjectWise in Construction

Bentley’s ProjectWise collaboration servers have become the established mainstay for work sharing and engineering content management for the:

• ENR Top Design Firms (25 of Top 25, 46 of Top 50 , and 82 of Top 100 ).