Bentley Systems, Incorporated, established in 1984, provides software for the lifecycle of the world’s infrastructure.
The company’s comprehensive portfolio for the building, plant, civil, and geospatial vertical markets spans architecture, engineering, construction (AEC), and operations. Its software solutions are used to design, engineer, build, and operate infrastructure such as roadways, bridges, airports, skyscrapers, industrial and power plants, and utility networks.
The company is well known for MicroStation, Bentley’s flagship desktop product for the design, construction, and operation of the world’s infrastructure. MicroStation and ProjectWise, Bentley’s collaboration server line for the AEC world, form a robust foundation for Bentley’s comprehensive portfolio of software solutions.
“MicroStation has gone through years of enhancement and is now a very mature and popular product,” says Ted Lamboo, senior vice president international sales. “It is Bentley’s best-selling product.”
Continues Lamboo, “Bentley now has a large, comprehensive portfolio of applications and organized itself a few years ago into the following four, vertically focused segments:
* Bentley Geospatial - solutions for communications, government and utilities. Geospatial solutions are used for planning, designing, engineering, operating, and maintaining networked infrastructure (such as distributed water and telecommunications networks) and other spatial assets.”
* Bentley Building - solutions for buildings and facilities. Building solutions power the design, construction, and operation of commercial and public buildings around the world.
* Bentley Plant - solutions for industrial and process plants. Plant solutions are used around the world and across the lifecycle of the asset, from small retrofits and expansions to existing facilities to large, full-scale, greenfield plant design and construction projects.
* Bentley Civil - solutions for road, rail, and site infrastructure. These are complete civil solutions that improve and streamline planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance.
Each of the segments is equal in size in terms of revenue and employees, and it’s the breadth of solutions applicable across the range of infrastructure projects that has led to the company’s success.”
According to Lamboo, “The year 2004 was a banner year for Bentley in the plant market sector, illustrated by the company’s 14 first-place rankings in Daratech’s plant market reports. The success of Bentley’s DigitalPlant solution, strong growth in enterprise subscriptions, and four strategic acquisitions in the Plant market - eWarehouse from ESSI, the AXSYS process engineering products from AspenTech, Haestad Methods and its water modelling products, and the IFS CAD software products - contributed to making Bentley arguably the leading vendor in this market.”
Bentley’s record 2004 revenue of more than $300 million and recurring revenue of more than $200 million placed the company as the leading vendor in 14 Daratech plant software market categories, including: overall software sales and recurring revenue for plant creation; software and services sales of plant-specific platforms; software and services sales to owner-operators for plant creation (with revenue in this category greater than the total of the three closest vendors); and software sales and recurring software revenue for conceptual plant creation.
Early in 2004, Bentley acquired ESSI and over the year successfully integrated its eWarehouse technology into the DigitalPlant solution.
Later on in the year, Bentley acquired the AXSYS integrated process engineering product line from Aspen Technology. These proven products include AXSYS Process, which offers front-end design with feedback from plant operations and equipment history, and AXSYS Integrity, which provides risk-based inspection and planning to evaluate life extensions and plant maintenance.
In August of 2004, Bentley acquired Haestad Methods, Inc, an industry leader in water resources solutions. This acquisition expanded Bentley’s offerings to owner-operators in the water and wastewater markets and to engineering, procurement, and construction contractors (EPCs) serving those markets.
Bentley also acquired the AutoCAD-based applications for process, electrical, piping, and instrumentation design from IFS, headquartered in Linkˆping, Sweden. IFS users are largely owner-operators in the power generation and pulp and paper industries, and the products are integrated with the IFS suite of business solutions for asset maintenance and spare parts logistics.
DigitalPlant is Bentley’s solution for bringing the worlds of engineering information and business information together. On the business side, ERP programs from vendors such as SAP have consolidated enterprise information into a unified resource system to cut costs and increase efficiencies. Bentley’s DigitalPlant solution sets out to achieve this on the plant operations side by connecting the silos of engineering information to each other and to enterprise resource systems.
DigitalPlant meets the demanding requirements for this connectivity, including:
* Proven technology software products: Improving the information management of plant facilities requires solutions with real references, in use on today’s assets. Owner-operators can install DigitalPlant now and benefit now - and not have to wait for the promise of new technologies with uncertain futures.
* Protection of current investments: Starting from scratch in their information systems is not an option for plant owner-operators or their EPCs. DigitalPlant preserves and extends existing investments by connecting - not replacing - all current systems and information.
* Support of files and components: A reality of plant information systems is that they handle and communicate information at two levels - components and files. Connecting these systems properly requires the exchange and management of information at both the file and component level - a capability unique to DigitalPlant.
* Management of change: Information in each of the plant systems is constantly changing. A fundamental requirement of connecting these systems is to manage the change across these systems, otherwise one or many become woefully out of date. DigitalPlant manages and processes change across all plant information systems.
DigitalPlant’s benefits, including significant cost reduction and greater efficiencies, have been realised by some of the world’s leading process industry companies.
“One of Bentley’s core strengths is the ability to manage data centrally across entire project teams - even if a subcontractor has to take a part of the project to do the engineering work, build the plant, and put the as-built information back into the system,” adds Lamboo.
“In addition,” continues Lamboo, “we also specialise in the lifecycle management of data. The lifecycle of a plant can be 30, 50, or even 70 years. During that time on the IT side, hardware is replaced, desktop technology (PCs) constantly changes, engineers are trained, and retrained. The plant is also being refurbished and updated, with its data, drawings, and documents constantly changing. To manage all these changes effectively, you need an open system that supports the multiple formats, and you need a data-centric approach to managing the information. Data has to survive the lifecycle of the plant. Lifecycle management is our forte.
“DigitalPlant is how you digitally describe a plant throughout its life. It is as important to manage the data as it is to manage the plant itself. Effective data management will help you cost-effectively maintain the plant, meet the ever-changing regulatory demands, and enable you to take advantage of the subcontractor market to reduce your costs.
“We have a big customer base in owner operators and EPC firms. Aramco, for example, is one of our plant owner-operator customers. Inside Aramco, there are many different disciplines - they carry out geological survey work, produce maps of their oil fields, carry out and subcontract engineering work (from civil engineering through building design to plant design), and maintain and operate offshore platforms, onshore terminals, refineries, and petrochemical complexes.
“Aramco uses Bentley products from all four vertical segments. We are a total engineering solution provider to them.”
“The strength of Bentley,” continues Lamboo, “is to be able to offer engineering software solutions based on a common platform that can integrate with the enterprise environment of the user. We solve the users’ problems. No two users are the same.”
Regarding the platform of technology
“In the baseline of Bentley’s product lines sit client software and server software that act as baseline for all of the four vertical disciplines for which we have applications,” says Lamboo.
“So in our baseline we are known for MicroStation as the platform for computer-aided design. We have architectural, civil, geospatial, and plant applications that sit on this same platform. On the server side, we have server technology known as ProjectWise, which is engineering data management on the server.
“Bentley has also introduced 3D within Adobe PDF. Adobe PDF is the ideal format for sharing AEC drawings and specifications. Now you can create Adobe PDF documents with embedded 3D models. You can convey complex 3D designs to all of the partners and clients no matter what tools they use.
“With new support of 3D within Adobe PDF, one can import shaded, 3D models and photorealistic renderings directly from MicroStation and set the model quality and resolution; control viewing and animation, and navigate the model using hyperlinks and bookmarks.”
Adobe PDF animations make it the best format for creating walkthroughs and flyovers, developing proposals for review, or communicating construction sequencing.
Bentley is a 20-year-old company. For the first 10 years, it was a software development company. In 1994, Bentley became a fully independent company, dealing directly with local resellers as well as handling so-called corporate accounts.
“We have grown in a period of 10 years from being a $30 million company to having revenues in 2004 exceeding $300 million,” says Lamboo. “Bentley now employs 1,700 employees around the globe in 55 countries, which makes Bentley the largest company dedicated to the world of AEC.” The company opened its first office in the Middle East region 10 years ago.
An important measure of Bentley’s 2004 success is the increasing adoption of Bentley’s Enterprise License Subscription (ELS) program, which grants organisations unlimited access to the entire ELS software portfolio for a fixed, annual fee. The portfolio covers all the AEC software needs of subscribers, providing building, plant, civil, and geospatial solutions and supporting a managed environment for their AEC IT. Organisations participating in the program can increase their software productivity and reduce their total AEC software costs simultaneously.
In the plant industry, more than 20 organisations have subscribed to ELS, including nine owner-operators and 12 of Engineering News-Record’s Top 500 Design Firms.
In 2004, Bentley secured 16 new ELS agreements, including notable firms in the AEC industry like Michael Baker Corporation (US), Bayer AG (Germany), Bechtel Corporation (US), Technip (France), and Washington Group International (US).
Around two-thirds of Bentley’s revenues are obtained through subscriptions, including the Bentley SELECT program. Bentley SELECT is more than a service contract that supports Bentley products. It’s a comprehensive technology and service subscription program that includes flexible subscription options, exclusive licensing privileges, continuous product upgrades, comprehensive technical support, discounts on training and software, and more.
The Bentley Institute provides training courses to help organisations achieve maximum productivity through professional growth. Training is offered at any of its worldwide training centres, on-site at customer locations, and through self-paced learning online. Organizations may also choose to take advantage of unlimited training for a fixed annual fee with the Enterprise Training Subscription program.
Bentley Institute maintains credentials for all those who attend its courses. Users are able to view transcripts online to review their Bentley training history. Credentials provide a way for individuals to communicate their career development and provide tools that help managers track and build their organisational development.
At the BE Conference 2005 (www.be.org), being held May 8-12 in Baltimore, Maryland, Bentley will unveil and detail the Bentley Institute Star Program. The new program will recognize user learning achievement levels - from one to five stars - based on their accumulated learning units.
“For Bentley, service is important. We strive to serve our customers, and we are committed to their success!” says Lamboo.
