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Philadelphia, PA, Bentley International User Conference - September 30, 1999 - Bentley Systems, Incorporated (Exton, PA) today announced that BASF Corporation (Mount Olive, NJ) is standardizing on ProjectWiseT as its design information management solution. BASF, a chemical manufacturing company, will initially use 230 concurrent licenses of ProjectWise on eight servers, across eighteen sites in the North American Free Trade region (NAFTA), which includes the US, Canada and Mexico. The company selected ProjectWise after evaluating products from Intergraph (NASDAQ: INGR), TSA Advet, and Bentley, as well as a solution developed in-house. ProjectWise will be used for design information management at BASF plants.

The technical computing group of BASF supports engineering across more than forty sites in the NAFTA region and is responsible for implementing engineering standards and certifying all engineering software. Recently, three software solutions have been used for design information management: ModelServer TeamMater from Bentley, Falcon from TSA Advet, and the solution developed in-house.

BASF senior vice president of engineering Larry Blair comments, "Standardizing on one solution for design information management will provide a better flow of information between and within engineering sites in the NAFTA region. Simply put, the BASF NAFTA region has over forty sites, with approximately 3,000 ongoing projects involving over 2,000 people. This creates a real information management challenge for us." He adds, "By consensus, we've chosen ProjectWise as our standard because of its design information management capabilities and our commitment to Bentley products."

At the Mount Olive, NJ, headquarters, the engineering group is responsible for the design of plants in the NAFTA region. Thus, the group needs access to all engineering files, which currently requires that duplicate sets of files exist. With ProjectWise, engineers and designers with proper authorization in Mount Olive will be able to securely access the ProjectWise database in Geismar, LA, for example, and access all engineering information directly without copying files. In addition, smaller sites that do not have engineering groups, such as the South Brunswick, NJ, office, will now be able to simply access the Mount Olive ProjectWise database to view and mark-up engineering files.

George Schnurr, manager of the technical computing group at BASF, states, "For many years, our engineering has been standardized on Bentley products, including MicroStationr and MicroStation PowerDraftr. Standardizing saves quite a bit of time and money and simplifies the management of our engineering software. Now, standardizing on ProjectWise simplifies the management of our design and engineering information."

Al Rausa, staff engineer for the technical computing group, adds, "Having common tools and software across all sites in the organization makes it easier to maintain. Adding ProjectWise to the mix of Bentley products we currently use, further leverages our Bentley SELECT subscription for technical support and product maintenance."

Additional Bentley products used by BASF include MicroStation, MicroStation PowerDraft, PowerScoper, MicroStation Modelerr, and PlantSpacer Enterprise NavigatorT. BASF is currently evaluating the PlantSpace Design Series. Titan Microsystems Inc. (NYC, NY) and Promus Corporation (Bedford, MA), both MicroStation value-added resellers (MVARs), provide implementation, training, and technical support to the BASF engineering group in New Jersey.

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A leading engineering information management solution, ProjectWise is a versatile client/server environment for global collaboration on engineering projects. It delivers project information safely and accurately to any designated user and can be applied for all projects in architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, utilities and transportation.

Unlike other solutions that focus only on access to information, the engineering information management foundation of ProjectWise provides integral user access management at a file level. The workflow is integrated with version/revision control; integration with key applications, including MicroStation/Jr, AutoCAD from Autodesk [NASDAQ: ADSK], and common office applications like Microsoft Word; and integrated information publishing, ensuring informational integrity at every step of the engineering and construction process.

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Bentley Systems, Incorporated is a worldwide leader in aecXML-ready, project-oriented engineering software. The Bentley ContinuumSM is the company's project engineering strategy comprising products, services, and strategic affiliations. The company serves more than 300,000 professionals in building/plant engineering, geoengineering, and manufacturing engineering. With annual revenues of over $175 million, Bentley is the number two software provider in the worldwide architecture, engineering and construction (A/E/C) market, according to Daratech, and is the world's largest software company primarily dedicated to A/E/C.

Bentley's MicroStation and ModelServerr engineering products are essential to successful projects at over 70 percent of the largest U.S. engineering firms, and the owners of their engineered assets. Bentley is the leader in project engineering, providing engineering information management, management of change, and engineering transaction management through its ProjectBankT technology and ProjectWise products. Bentley's software is sold and implemented through Bentley Integrators and MVARs, on a one-to-one basis for user organizations that create and operate the world's infrastructure, including landmark buildings, roadways, manufacturing facilities, and utility and telecommunications networks. The Bentley SELECT subscription program now reaches more than 200,000 users.