Interview with Brian Moura at CONNECTION Seminars 2017

Brian Moura, Technical Director, Integrated Lifecycle Solutions, Bentley Systems.

Experienced Corporate Sales, Marketing, Consulting Services and Engineering Professional. I have over 36 years of experience working with Engineering Systems supporting the Architectural, Engineering, and Construction Industry. Mr. Moura has worked in design teams for Waste Water Treatment, Petrochemical, Fossil Fuel and Nuclear Power Plant, Product Design and Manufacturing Facilities, Utilities, Biotech, Pharmaceutical and Government Lab facilities as well as the Transportation Industry.

Tunnels & Infrastructures: Please tell us more about new products of CONNECT Edition.

Brian Moura: It’s about connecting our users to their data, projects and organizations to collaborate more effectively. We first released ProjectWise, MicroStation and Bentley Navigator. Since then, Bentley has currently released to date approximately 111 products in the CONNECT edition, with more products being added every week.

T&I: What does it mean to be a “connected” user?

Moura: SELECT CONNECT Edition ensures infrastructure professionals have the services, support, and applications they need to deliver successful projects. CONNECTservices, a new benefit for SELECT subscribers, advances your organization’s digital evolution and helps you to stay connected – to your work, to your information, and to your teams—at any time, and no matter where you are.  SELECT CONNECT Edition ensures infrastructure professionals have the tools and the services they need as their organizations embrace Going Digital.

T&I: What advantages does Bentley’s “connected” user get? CONNECTservices enables:

1. Adaptive Learning Services for users to master the use of Bentley applications through personalized, contextual learning.
2. Personal Mobility empowering individuals to get work done at any time from any place with access to Bentley’s mobile apps.
3. ProjectWise Connection Services enabling teams to connect and collaborate with the ability to securely create, share, and deliver data and documents and to evaluate project status and performance.
4. CONNECTservices are made available through the CONNECTION Center, a personalized site for every Bentley user. The CONNECTION Center is your essential resource to all your Bentley services and to connect with Bentley colleagues, other Bentley users in your organization, and other Bentley users around the world. The CONNECTION Center is also where you will access all other CONNECT Edition cloud services.
5. If you are a Connected User and already have a Bentley Profile, you can sign-in to access CONNECTservices immediately.

T&I: How Bentley’s solutions help to improve collaboration on the project?

Moura: It allows you to gain a connected user and project experience that spans design modeling, analytical modeling, and construction modeling. Control all of your projects with design integration, construction and contract management, deliverables management, BIM reviews, field data management and performance dashboards. You will increase your individual productivity, unify multi-discipline teams, and connect your project delivery supply chain while ensuring data integrity and improving project performance.

T&I: Tell us more about Bentley’s connected data environment?

Moura: A CONNECTED data environment for comprehensive project delivery improves the way you design, build, and collaborate on projects of all types and of all scales.

T&I: Are there any new products or solutions that announced recently by the company?

Moura: Yes we have introduced many new applications and services but including OpenRoads, LumenRT and Context Capture but one new exciting technology stands out in the area of transportation. It is a game changing application.

OpenRail ConceptStation is an innovative, new application to enable rapid and iterative conceptual and preliminary design, leveraging contextual information obtained through point clouds, reality meshes, GIS, and other sources. It allows you to rapidly create conceptual designs for rail infrastructure.

Reality Modeling:

T&I: What does reality modeling mean?

Moura: Reality Modeling is the process of capturing existing conditions of existing infrastructure. By capturing digital photography of the target area with any handheld or mounted digital camera – on drones or vehicles – we can use our ContextCapture software derive precise 3D Reality Meshes of the target area. Since we can do it rapidly, surveying can now be continuous, opening up many new exciting workflows and business opportunities.

T&I: How does Bentley develop Reality modeling solutions?

Those reality meshes are used in wide range of applications from Mapping, Design, Construction, Inspection and Asset Management. Bentley is developing its Reality Modelling offering on multiple fronts.

• Fidelity: Hybrid processing in ContextCapture enables the creation of engineering-ready reality meshes that incorporate the best of both worlds – the versatility and convenience of high-resolution photography, supplemented, where needed, by additional accuracy from laser scanning. The new photo planning capabilities in Bentley’s applications empower engineering or survey professionals to easily prescribe the optimal camera positions and flight paths for UAVs to achieve the required levels of accuracy, in particular, for critical inspection points.
• Accessibility: The new ContextCapture mobile app brings reality capture to every member of a project delivery or asset management team. Combined with the new ContextCapture cloud processing service, this delivers 3D reality meshes back to the mobile device, and to office-based professionals, immediately after a set of photos have been taken. The new Navigator Web application makes immersive reality modeling accessible through any browser, with progressive levels of detail.
• Scalability: ContextCapture uniquely enables reality modeling to scale from city models to site models to component nameplates. Users can now take advantage of cloud services’ inherent parallel computing to speed processing of reality meshes. Scalable mesh technology enables multi-resolution inputs through the new (.3sm) format.
• Shareability: ProjectWise, the collaboration system of choice for the majority of the ENR Top Design Firms, delivers comprehensive work sharing supported by a connected data environment, unifying design and construction teams to enable comprehensive project delivery. ProjectWise CONNECT Edition is provisioned by Microsoft’s Azure cloud service, and supports hybrid environments. The new ProjectWise ContextShare service adds breakthrough performance in securely streaming reality meshes and their inputs, making it possible to instantly and persistently share full-scale engineering-ready datasets across a distributed team, whether in the field or in the office. Offered through a visa subscription, with charges only for actual use, ProjectWise ContextShare completes the reach of Bentley’s comprehensive reality modeling solution, empowering engineering and surveying professionals to extend the value of their services across all applications and throughout the infrastructure lifecycle.

T&I: Tell us about new features of ContextCapture and ProjectWise.

Moura: Reality modeling has now gone mainstream, as noted in this press release at our Year in Infrastructure 2016. There, we also introduced another breakthrough – where we can now fuse point cloud data with reality meshes to open up even more possible workflows and opportunities. This creates a hybrid environment that is unique only to Bentley allowing high level of accuracy with point cloud data with context of photos reflecting the real-world conditions.

ContextCapture capabilities now include cloud processing services, a mobile app, and photo planning for Bentley’s applications. ContextShare extends Bentley’s ProjectWise connected data environment to securely manage, share, and stream reality meshes, and their input sources, across project teams and applications. Navigator Web is a new web application that delivers high-performance streaming of very large reality meshes through the browser to desktop or mobile devices.

IIL:

T&I: Please tell us more about OpenRoads CONNECT Edition?

Moura: OpenRoads builds on our tradition and deep experience in civil and road network, and provides a comprehensive modeling environment to support design and analysis from concept through construction.

OpenRoads enables the project delivery of road networks through construction-driven engineering and delivers all the information needed to support operational worfklows. OpenRoads applications help redefine best practices for design and construction deliverables supporting the exchange of information throughout the project delivery lifecycle, to all participants of the project delivery team.

• OpenRoads ConceptStation is an innovative, new application to enable rapid and iterative conceptual and preliminary design, leveraging contextual information obtained through point clouds, reality meshes, GIS, and other sources.
• OpenRoads Designer is a comprehensive and fully functioned detailed design application for surveying, drainage, subsurface utilities, and roadway design that supersedes all capabilities previously delivered through InRoads, GEOPAK, MX, and PowerCivil.
• OpenRoads Navigator enables 3D design visualization and design review and progresses approvals and issues resolution, at the office, in the field, or at the site.