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Norway's Largest Oil Company Installs New Facilities Management in Record Time

Philadelphia, PA, Bentley International User Conference - October 1, 1999 - Bentley Systems, Incorporated (Exton, PA), today announced that Norway's Statoil, one of the world's largest net sellers of crude oil, has licensed and almost overnight installed an innovative facilities management (FM) system based on Bentley's ActiveAsset PlannerT and ProjectWiseT extranet software. The new system covers all sites in Norway and is believed to have achieved the fastest installation time for any major FM project worldwide.

The core of the ActiveAsset-based system, with 50 seats of ProjectWise Extranet, was installed in only 100 days including data conversion from the pre-existing FM solution. The new system goes live on October 1.

Comments Kjell Sirevaag, Section Manager at Statoil: "We bought Bentley's systems for our entire onshore operation because we wanted a system capable of managing the dynamic environment of some 450,000 square meters where departments and functions change.

The system needed to help us to continuously analyze the most efficient usage of the office space and facilities of the company. It covers aspects from cleaning to space allocation in addition to being our document management system. The Bentley solution satisfied most of our needs as soon as it was installed and we will later be adding integration with SAP."

ActiveAsset Planner innovatively unifies space (e.g. buildings) and asset (e.g. plant) data in a single management environment built on any ODBC-compliant database and can link these to enterprise-wide information systems to ensure data currency. ActiveAsset Planner uses ProjectWise Extranet, based on Web technology, for the storage of all drawings and documents and as a data retrieval tool which allows facilities managers to access information at a space or asset level. When a space or asset is viewed, the associated building floor plan and any other relevant backdrop information (services, site etc.) are automatically retrieved and displayed on screen. This process is transparent to the end user, requiring no knowledge of where the information is stored or what the document files are named. ProjectWise supports documents in over 200 file format types, such as MicroStationr, AutoCADr from Autodesk [NASDAQ: ADSK], and Microsoft Office files. Documents are stored in their native data format-in either a central archive or distributed across file servers.

Commented Buddy Cleveland, senior vice president of the ModelEngineering Business Group at Bentley Systems: "This was the fastest major FM system installation I have ever heard of. Implementation in about 100 days with 99,5% of all existing documentation being automatically converted into the new system is remarkable. Compared to most people's expectations in the FM business you could say it was done almost overnight. This shows what can be done when you bring together an innovative customer like Statoil with a skilled integrator like Techno Cad and the backup of the implementation experts at Team Bentley Continuum."

The software and installation were provided to Statoil by Techno Cad, one of Bentley's newest and largest system integrators, supported by the worldwide network of technical implementation experts called Team Bentley Continuum.

More on Statoil

Statoil-Den norske stats oljeselskap a.s-is one of the world's largest net sellers of crude oil, and a substantial supplier of natural gas to Europe. It ranks as the biggest retailer of petrol and other oil products in Scandinavia. The group is the leading player on the Norwegian continental shelf, and has gradually expanded its international upstream operations in recent years. Statoil's object is, either by itself of through participation in or together with other companies, to carry out exploration, production, transport, refining and marketing of petroleum and petroleum-derived products, as well as other business.

The group is responsible for managing the state's direct financial interest (SDFI) in partnerships engaged in exploration for as well as development, production and transport of oil and gas on the Norwegian continental shelf. Founded in 1972, Statoil is wholly-owned by the Norwegian state. Net operating revenue for the group in 1998 totaled NOK 107 billion. It had the equivalent of about 18,000 full-time employees at 31 December. Statoil operates in the following countries: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the UK, Ireland, Belgium, France, Russia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Azerbaijan, Kazakstan, Angola, Nigeria, the USA, Australia, China and Venezuela.

More on Bentley

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.