{"data":{"news":{"items":[{"title":"Bentley and Microsoft expand alliance on infrastructure digital twins","date":"2020-10-23 15:24:05","id":2485,"author":"","blurb":"","blurb_image_uid":"https://dxfpracgmlczp.cloudfront.net/2020/10/1603296063436_Bentley_Microsoft_Partnership_Press_Announcement_Supporting_Assets-9.jpg","blurb_expanded_image_uid":null,"article":"\n\t\n\n\n

Bentley Systems and Microsoft Corp. have expanded their strategic alliance focused on advancing infrastructure for smart city urban planning and smart construction. The alliance will combine Microsoft’s Azure IoT Digital Twins and Azure Maps with Bentley Systems’ iTwins platform, enabling engineers, architects, constructors and city planners to work within a comprehensive city-scale digital twin, empowering better decision-making, optimising operational efficiency, reducing costs and improving collaboration.

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The two companies will collaborate to develop new smart city solutions. They will explore opportunities for digital twins in urban planning and citizen engagement for cities around the world. The collaboration will enable improved decision-making and increased productivity through Microsoft Teams for infrastructure engineers.

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“At Bentley we believe that infrastructure digital twins can empower engineers, constructors and owner-operators to design, build and operate infrastructure assets that are more cost-effective, more resilient and more sustainable,” said Greg Bentley, CEO of Bentley Systems. “With Azure as the foundation of our cloud services, our offerings are more broadly scaled and differentiated by the further integrations of Microsoft technologies. We are excited to extend our partnership to bring new digital twin advances to infrastructure engineering organisations and their constituents.”

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“With Azure IoT, Azure Digital Twins and Bentley’s iTwins platform, the world’s infrastructure - vital to our economies and environment - stands to gain so much by enabling people to create comprehensive digital models of an entire environment,” said Casey McGee, vice president Partner Development, US One Commercial Partner, Microsoft. “Our expanded strategic alliance with Bentley Systems opens up new opportunities for innovation and will accelerate the benefits of digital twins for infrastructure engineering organisations and, more broadly, society at large.”

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City planning and football club complex projects

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The capital city of Dublin, Ireland, with a population of more than 1.2 million, is working with Bentley Systems to develop a large-scale digital twin as part of the city’s planning efforts. “To overcome the challenges of getting public review and comment for new development projects in Dublin during the pandemic, we turned to Microsoft and Bentley to create an interactive virtual environment to ensure our citizens could provide their input from the safety of their homes and keep the development projects on track,” said Jamie Cudden, smart city programme manager at Dublin City Council.

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“The impact of the pandemic has forced cities like Dublin to accelerate their digital transformation journeys. Working with Microsoft and Bentley, we are reimagining how interactive virtual environments and digital twins can support citizens to engage from the safety of their own home on new development projects in their local communities. Working with these technology partners, we are building an adaptable and scalable solution based on Microsoft Teams and Bentley’s OpenCities Planner that will set the standard for the future of planning and public engagement in cities.”

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In addition to sustaining infrastructure development in smart cities, project digital twins are facilitating industrial construction. Bentley Systems was recognised by Microsoft as the 2020 MSUS Partner Award winner for the Industry-Automotive category, in which an automotive factory uses the HoloLens 2 with Bentley’s Synchro 4D construction-modelling software.

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Similarly, FC Barcelona, one of the oldest football clubs in Europe, is partnering with Bentley as part of the club’s renovation of Camp Nou stadium - which is currently under construction amid the pandemic. The project, located in Barcelona, will upgrade streets in the neighbourhood and increase capacity at the stadium to revitalise an ageing stadium and for the club to compete with other top European cities.

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“Bentley has been working with FC Barcelona on the Espai Barça Project for over three years, helping the architects, the construction team and the club complete an extraordinary challenge - delivering a major renovation of the stadium while it continues to host matches,” said William T. Mannarelli, director of Real Estate & Espai Barça. “With Bentley’s Synchro 4D construction-modelling software running on the Azure cloud, we can apply cutting-edge techniques to manage the complex and precise scheduling required to keep the stadium open during construction.”

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Bentley’s ProjectWise, in conjunction with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Teams, has empowered Bentley’s users to work from home safely while collaborating virtually on projects anywhere in the world.

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The companies will further combine Bentley’s infrastructure digital twins expertise with Microsoft’s cloud technologies for: ProjectWise 365 - an instant-on, 100% Azure cloud-based solution that increases the speed and quality of infrastructure design collaboration, which will be available through Microsoft’s commercial marketplace; and Bentley’s iTwins platform to leverage Microsoft’s Azure Digital Twins, Azure IoT Hub, Azure Time Series Insights and other Microsoft cloud services, for users to rapidly store and process operational data.

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Images: Bentley Systems

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The Jakarta metropolitan area in Indonesia, known locally as Jabodetabek, is expected to become the world’s largest city by 2030. Home to 35.5 million people, it is already one of the most congested cities in the world.

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The city’s commuter rail system is under extreme pressure, causing Indonesia’s national rail operator Kereta Api to invest in improvements to increase capacity, provide greater reliability, and deliver a better experience for the over one million daily users across its network.

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The Manggarai Station is currently a transit station on the Commuterline Jabodetabek and Soekarno - Hatta Airport Rail Link. Due to its future potential to cater for increased capacity, the station is being redeveloped and will replace Gambir Station as the terminus for long-distance trains serving the city in late 2021.

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To achieve this goal, Indonesia’s Ministry of Transportation appointed PT. Waskita Karya (Persero) Tbk (Waskita), in a joint venture with PT. Pijar Utama, as a contractor on Phase II of the project.

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Many challenges

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Waskita made it its goal to construct a new bridge connecting the second floor of the station’s main building with the existing mainline at grade, together with new track panels above and below the bridge. However, the company encountered various challenges on the project. In addition to construction, the client required Waskita to take on the design review of the existing contract drawings due to discrepancies with current standards and existing conditions.

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As a result of the high amount of train traffic in Manggarai Station, the team faced constraints on the method of construction that it could use, running the risk of incurring additional time on the contract. Waskita also needed to pay particular attention to the prestressed concrete beam bridge segment, which accounted for 30% of the contract’s value.

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The project’s success hinged on three main objectives: quality compliance, cost, and time efficiency. Therefore, Waskita needed a software solution that would help make every decision throughout the 720-calendar-day contract period both timely and accurate. For this reason, the company decided to adopt BIM workflows and a digital twins approach using Bentley technology.

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4D construction modelling

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Key to Waskita’s successfully overcoming many of the engineering challenges on the Manggarai Station project was its creation of a multidiscipline BIM coordination model using Bentley technology. With OpenRail Designer, OpenBridge Designer and ContextCapture, Waskita transformed its traditional 2D paper-based processes into 3D clash detection and resolution digital workflows, enabling engineers to measure true distances between designed structures and existing assets to ensure adequate clearance and right-first-time construction.

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Geometry control capabilities in OpenBridge Designer enabled Waskita to calculate accurate geometry and coordinate information for each bridge segment, then export the data directly to the manufacturer. This practice helped mitigate against the significant risks associated with ordering segments of the wrong size or number.

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With significant constraints that included the need to keep lines on the existing railway operational throughout the construction schedule, and due to its ability to visualise and clearly communicate planned activities to other team members and stakeholders, Waskita adopted Bentley’s Synchro software to perform 4D construction modelling on the Manggarai Station project.

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“Setting up a digital twin with Bentley’s technology is very convenient,” said Marsa Achadian Tyarpratama, BIM junior expert at Waskita. “When the client urged us to give options concerning what outcome that they wanted to achieve in this project and how much it will cost, there was no better way to point those options out than visualising it with the digital twin.”

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Better, more informed decisions

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Combining design information for tracks, civils, bridges, and structures, with a 3D reality mesh of the existing ground, Waskita’s BIM coordination model has helped the company and different stakeholders on the project to make better, more informed decisions.

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Having helped identify budget shortages within the design review, Waskita’s coordination model allows the company to clearly visualise different alternatives in terms of project scope and cost. It is proving to be a critical part of Waskita’s ongoing work and negotiations with its client for project amendments.

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The use of OpenBridge Designer, OpenRail Designer and ContextCapture for clash detection and resolution on the project meant that Waskita has avoided issues that might not have been discovered until construction commenced. Because it could identify potential problems earlier in the process, the company avoided additional time and cost overheads of approximately 0.3% per month. Waskita’s use of geometry control functionality in OpenBridge Designer has helped mitigate the risks and avoid the unnecessary cost and delays associated with incorrectly cast bridge spans.

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In response to demands for more clarity on construction sequences, Waskita’s use of Synchro helped shorten the construction schedule by optimising the resources available. Adoption of this digital workflow enabled right-first-time construction, as well as provided valuable insight for Waskita and other stakeholders on the project.

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Image: PT. Waskita Karya (Persero) Tbk

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Note: PT. Waskita Karya (Persero) Tbk has received a Special Recognition Award (Comprehensiveness in Transportation Digital Twins) for this project at Bentley’s Year in Infrastructure (YII) 2020 Awards.

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