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Research Initiative Promotes Three-way Cross-fertilization With Leading Institutes and Innovative Practitioners

Philadelphia, PA, Bentley International User Conference - September 28, 1999 - Bentley Systems, Incorporated (Exton, PA), today announced a new research initiative to link leading research institutes and software developers at Bentley with innovative practitioners in architecture, engineering and construction (A/E/C). Bentley's objective is to be a catalyst between researchers and practitioners, by creating the software infrastructure which facilitates the development and deployment of innovative design tools.

Bentley recognizes that important innovations in project-oriented collaborative engineering and advanced design and evaluation tools are emerging at leading academic and research institutes. At the same time, many of the most innovative practitioners in A/E/C are hungry for these new computing tools, but require these to be integrated into their existing computing and "design-support" systems. To this end, Bentley has established a three-way research initiative linking research scientists (in academic institutes) with software developers (at Bentley) and leading architects and engineers (in the practitioner community).

The Research Initiative comprises the following projects at its outset:

MIT's "house_n" (or House of the Future) project (led by Prof. Kent Larson)

The SEED Project with Carnegie Mellon University and with CERL (the US Army Corps of Engineers Research Laboratory) as the industrial partner (led by Prof. Ulrich Fleming)

The Conceptual Design project with Georgia Tech and with Portman Associates as the industrial partner (led by Prof. Chuck Eastman)

The Intelligent Plant Room project, led by its industrial partner Oscar Faber, in collaboration with Prof. Paul Richens of the University of Cambridge. This project has, in addition to support from Bentley, attracted UK government research funding under the MCNS program (Meeting Client Needs through Standardization).

The Advanced Decision Support for Construction Design project with the University of Salford and University of Sheffield and with the Building Design Partnership as the industrial partner (led by Prof. Graham Cooper)

Bentley's Senior Scientist Dr. Robert Aish, who directs the initiative, commented, "Bentley wishes to constructively engage with the research and user communities, ensuring that we are addressing the appropriate issues, that we are harnessing research innovations and that our software implementations match the present and future needs of the A/E/C industry. The United States, through the National Science Foundation and other agencies and industrial initiatives, spends considerable sums each year on construction research." He continued, "The key question is how to realize the benefit of this research in practice. One way is to encapsulate these research ideas in new innovative software."

Dr. Aish explained that Bentley can act as a sophisticated delivery mechanism to allow these research concepts to be "operationalized" in a form that practitioners can deploy on construction projects. His white paper, "Migration from an Individual to An Enterprise Computing Model and Its Implications for A/E/C Research," which was presented at a recent NFS workshop, is available at www.bentley.com/products/whtpaper.htm.

Tom Hernandez, Director of Computer Services at the world-renowned architectural firm Kohn Pedersen Fox (New York, NY), a major user of Bentley's software, welcomed this initiative. "The competitive demands of our industry mean that we are constantly looking for new tools to improve the design process. But the rigor of this competitive process means that we can only deploy production-strength software. We look to our software suppliers to harness research innovations and deliver these in a deployable form. That is why we are particularly impressed by Bentley's initiative, because it not only shows that they understand our needs, but also that they are aware of the vast potential of ideas that exist with the research community and are waiting to be harnessed."

Prof. Kent Larson, Director of the MIT Digital Design Laboratory and leader of the House_n research, comments, "The 'House of the Future' project is an excellent opportunity to create the 'design tools of the future.' But as researchers, we need to focus on our specific research contribution. We don't have time or resources to create all the computing tools we need, so it is particularly important to work with the latest software tools."

Prof. Larson continues, "The JavaT-based software from Bentley adds important functionality such as 'persistence' and 'transaction management.' These are the key to creating the type a collaborative design tools that we need to design future housing and their embedded automation systems. An important advantage of working with Bentley is that any new software tools we create as extensions to their core system can be immediately deployed in architectural and engineering practices. This kind of feedback, from realistic field trials, will give us immensely valuable data which in turn will help us understand how design tools can contribute to an 'architecture of the future.'" A report on the House_n project is available at www.architecturemag.com/sep99/tp/tp.asp.

Bentley research initiative projects were discussed at Bentley's second annual research seminar held today as part of the Bentley International User Conference. The agenda for the seminar is available at www.bentley.com/biuc/agenda/research.htm.