AEC TECH NEWS: Bentley ProjectWise CONNECT Edition joins MicroStation and Navigator CONNECT Editions in General Access

London — Bentley Systems, Incorporated announced that ProjectWise CONNECT Edition, MicroStation CONNECT Edition, and Navigator CONNECT Edition are all in General Access.

ProjectWise CONNECT Edition adds hybrid cloud services for deliverables management, issues resolution, and engineering content management.

“Hatch Mott MacDonald first implemented ProjectWise for secure design collaboration and engineering document work sharing. However, in today’s advancing project delivery environment, it is more important than ever to easily and securely share our models and associated project information, to expedite communications and design clarity with the entire supply chain,” said Cory Dippold, P.E., Project Technologies Director, Hatch Mott MacDonald. “Now with ProjectWise CONNECT Edition, we have a more comprehensive project delivery platform – virtually connecting our partners and remote team members to project information and processes with a focus on data quality for planning, design, construction, and handover to operations.”

“As we embark on our first design-build project – Long Street in EMIA – the demand for improved collaboration is an imperative,” said Nuzrul Haque, Director, IT Business Relationship Management, AECOM Information Technology. “As a long-standing user of ProjectWise, we have already seen significant increases in team productivity and better design quality. Now with ProjectWise CONNECT Edition, we have an easy-to-use, secure cloud-based environment supporting the entire project lifecycle. This powerful capability will simplify documentation workflow for critical project information, especially with our supply chain. It provides an excellent end-user interface to manage submissions, transmittals, and RFIs and helps us to standardize our workflows, allowing us to implement this AECOM standard on future design and build projects with minimum effort. The CONNECT Edition provides our senior management teams with real-time project status in one simple dashboard. The Long Street Project required us to reinvent and standardize the design-build process as only AECOM could by leveraging our scale, and in working closely with Bentley our project communications and visibility will not only be improved dramatically, but also allow AECOM to offer something unique to the market.”

“We struggle with reliably and consistently capturing field data on a daily basis,” said David Haskin, Senior Applications Specialist, Burns & McDonnell. “Our current process includes field books that can be lost and laptops that are clunky and can get broken. Being able to enter data into quick, easy-to-access forms from a mobile device is the wave of the future.”

MicroStation CONNECT Edition advances Bentley’s common modeling environment for unified support of design modeling, analytical modeling, construction modeling, and reality modeling.

“Maintaining a digital component catalog of every permutation/combination of objects has been challenging at best. The ability to have these objects be dynamic and reusable will save us constant setup/rework hours at the beginning of a job,” said Paul Patterson, Senior Specialist, Hatch Mott MacDonald. “The days of modeling existing conditions from as-builts are diminishing in favor of more progressive reality capture techniques. The application of this dynamic technology is proving to be incredibly important to our workflow.”

“MicroStation CONNECT Edition’s ability to automatically create reports and schedules on the fly based on object intelligence helps us to deliver reliable and consistent drawings,” said Marty Price, Senior Application Specialist, Burns & McDonnell. “And having property-driven annotation streamlines the process of making design changes too, because the deliverables stay up to date when changes happen. Plus, we can precisely control the appearance of tables, such as color and line weights, based on project standards. All this translates into better deliverables in less time!”

Navigator CONNECT Edition extends the common, connected experience for users from office to site or field. Its advances are highlighted by model-based visual reporting and, with the addition of ProjectWise, issue resolution.

“We used Navigator CONNECT Edition in the office, in anticipation of an upcoming project; its overall usability was superior to other systems and planners we have tried,” said Doug Harper, Construction Superintendent, Melloy Industrial Services, Inc. “For scheduling and meeting deliverables, being able to look into 3D modeling and define future stages was beneficial. The ability to share real-time project data with other colleagues working remotely on the same project was invaluable.”

“Navigator CONNECT Edition brings a consistent medium for geometry and data consumers residing in our local offices or via tablets from our sites, whether internal to IBI Group or a part of our extended teams,” said Brent Mauti, Architect, Global Director, Design Technology, IBI Group. “Some of our largest projects are harnessing this capability to bring information sourced by various tools – InRoads, Revit, MicroStation – together into one integrated platform. The data provenance is critical as the business information of specific assets carry through to the i-model format, allowing full interrogation of content consistently when accessed via ProjectWise or Worksite. The navigation engine is smooth, thus allowing us to easily traverse both the vertical buildings, along with linear infrastructure – site, rail and utilities. Overall Navigator CONNECT Edition has the potential to be the connection that binds our stakeholders together during major infrastructure projects.”

Additional information about Bentley’s CONNECT Edition is available at https://www.bentley.com/en/perspectives-and-viewpoints/topics/viewpoint/connect-edition-perspective.