What PBC Today saw at Bentley’s Year in Infrastructure and Going Digital Awards 2023

PBC Today attended Bentley Systems’ Year in Infrastructure and Going Digital Awards in Singapore, seeing real-world applications of their iTwin software

Held at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel and Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Bentley’s annual Year in Infrastructure and Going Digital Awards event celebrates the best in intelligent infrastructure, all developed, designed or benefitting from the use of Bentley software.

With a 64% increase in its use among Going Digital Awards finalists, the iTwin Platform was the star of this year’s show. When asked to quantify the engineering hours saved through digital advancements, the Going Digital Awards finalists reported significant median savings of 18%.

Day 1 saw a variety of presentations from the Going Digital Awards finalists

Over 300 nominations were submitted from 51 countries, from which 36 finalists were selected to present at Singapore.

Presentations highlighted the immense scale of each of the infrastructure projects and how Bentley’s digital twin software easily integrated thousands of factors and data to enable a seamless user experience.

Personal favourites of this reporter include the passionate presentation given by Water & Wastewater finalists Geoinfo Services, who chose Bentley’s OpenFlows to generate a hydraulic model and digital twin of the city of Ayodhya’s 24-hour supply scheme in India, reducing design time by 75%.

@Bentley Systems

The optimised network is now saving over $1.5m USD in annual operating expenses and through increasing access to clean water, now allows women and young girls to spend more time focusing on their careers and education, rather than on fetching water.

Not just for typical infrastructure

Another notable nominee was Italferr’s digital twin of St. Peter’s Basilica, aiming to preserve and protect an internationally recognised site of religious significance.

In an unsual application of the software, Italferr used ProjectWise, iTwin Capture, and MicroStation to manage three terabytes of multisourced data and generate a digital twin model that saved 50 hours of modeling time and delivered the project 20 days ahead of schedule.

Going forward, iTwin will be used to develop a structural monitoring system that will connected to the digital twin to monitor the basilica’s health.

This success, as well as winning the award in the Surveying & Monitoring category, demonstrates the versatility and potential of digital twins and Bentley’s software in particular.

Using iTwin, a structural monitoring system will be developed, facilitating data collection, and connected to the digital twin to monitor the basilica’s health.

‘The Digital Twin For Structural Monitoring Of St. Peter’s Basilica ’, by Italferr

After a day full of presentations and networking, there was the opportunity to let our hair down at Marina Bay Sand’s rooftop on the Skypark Observations Deck, standing a formidable 56 storeys up and looking over the Singapore skyline.

The view from the Skypark, @Bentley

Back to business on Day 2

On Thursday morning, there were more opportunities to join breakout sessions and discuss the variety of ways in which Bentley’s modelling software had been utilised.

Demonstrations of the iTwin platform were given, using the Marina Bay Sands Hotel as an example.

Keynote speeches and presentations were also given by Bentley’s c-suite, including CEO Greg Bentley.

Chief executive officer Greg Bentley introduces speakers at the conference keynote speech. @Bentley

Other speakers included Dr Victor Khoo, director of survey and geometrics at the Singapore Land Authority, in recognition of how Singapore has utilised digital twins and modelling solutions across their water and transport infrastructure to great success.

Founder Greg Bentley of @BentleySystems recognised Singapore as a “Mecca of #infrastructureintelligence”, noting their use of #digitaltwin software across #rail, #watermanagement and #landsurveying #YII2023 pic.twitter.com/BSenOfwIvg

— PBC Today & BIM Today (@PBC_Today) October 12, 2023

That evening, it was finally time for the Going Digital Awards

We enjoyed a lovely meal with a delightful show from local performers, before moving on to announcing the winners. @Bentley

Voted on by industry professionals and press jurors, each of the winning projects in the awards had demonstrated innovative and efficient applications of Bentley software in their infrastructure projects, each of which had gone on to achieve not only initial project goals but often creating additional social value or productivity.

The Going Digital Awards winners are as follows:

Bridges and Tunnels: WSP Australia Pty Ltd., Southern Program Alliance, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Construction: Laing O’Rourke; SEPA Surrey Hills Level Crossing Removal Project, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Enterprise Engineering: Mott MacDonald; Standardising Delivery of Phosphorus Removal Schemes for the UK Water Industry, United Kingdom
Facilities, Campuses, and Cities: vrame Consult GmbH; Siemensstadt Square – Digital Campus Twin in Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Process and Power Generation: Shenyang Aluminum & Magnesium Engineering & Research Institute Co., Ltd. (SAMI); Digital Twin Application Project of Electrolytic Aluminum Engineering of Chinalco China Resources, Lvliang, Shanxi, China
Rail and Transit: AECOM Perunding Sdn Bhd; Johor Bahru–Singapore Rapid Transit System, Malaysia and Singapore
Roads and Highways: I-70 Floyd Hill to Veterans Memorial Tunnels Project; AtkinsRéalis, Idaho Springs, Colorado, United States
Structural Engineering: Hyundai Engineering; Automated Design of Civil and Architectural Structures with STAAD API, Seoul, South Korea
Subsurface Modeling and Analysis: Arcadis; South Dock Bridge, London, England, United Kingdom
Surveying and Monitoring: Italferr S.p.A.; The Digital Twin for Structural Monitoring of St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City
Transmission and Distribution: POWERCHINA Hubei Electric Engineering Co., Ltd; Full Lifecycle Digital Application on Xianning Chibi 500kV Substation Project, Xianning, Hubei, China
Water and Wastewater: Project Controls Cubed LLC; EchoWater Project, Sacramento, California, United States