The VIECON initiative includes three elements: VIECON.com, a project extranet hosting service; VIECON Licensing, which provides licensing of Bentley technologies over the Internet on a by-person, by-project and by-month basis; and VIECON Platforms, a local version of the software for organisations who wish to create their own 'private networks'.

"The overall economic benefit this initiative provides engineering, construction and operations organisations will be greater than any technology shift in our 15-year history," Keith Bentley, CEO and Technology Visionary of Bentley declared at the Forbes conference on 'E-business in the construction industry'. "Improving the overall effectiveness of E/C/O projects - from design and procurement, through operations and maintenance - is the promise the new economy holds for our industry. As E/C/O participants embrace e-business, they create for themselves a substantial and sustainable competitive advantage. VIECON is the enabling technology that will make that happen."

Bentley's VIECON strategy is differentiated from other Internet approaches in three important ways. Its comprehensive nature allows for intelligent transactions such as queries of project data at the component level. This granularity makes e-commerce transactions such as sourcing and procurement possible. Bentley's investment in developing its ProjectBank technology is the basis for this differentiation, which drastically reduces the time spent analysing and processing the many change orders involved in complex asset construction.

VIECON relies on ubiquitous Internet standards, most notably aecXML, as the basis for direct machine-to-machine queries and communication, despite otherwise incompatible file formats. This means that VIECON facilitates information exchange throughout all phases of an E/C/O project, from design and analysis through specifications, catalogue searching, scheduling, bid processes, procurement, installation, deployment and maintenance.

VIECON allows direct synchronisation with organisations' 'engineering back office' information systems. It does so by relying upon, and extending the capabilities of, Bentley's engineering information management system, ProjectWise.

A new study from Cambridge-based research firm, Daratech, estimates the market for enabling technology providing web-hosted, standards-based, component-level design and project collaboration to surpass $1 billion by 2004.

"This is perhaps the most important development in technology for E/C/O in recent years," noted David Weisberg, Publisher and Editor of A-E-C Automation Newsletter. "Bentley has always been a step ahead of its competitors in recognising the dynamic changes that are affecting E/C/O. In one way or another, this offering will become an online backbone for everyone involved in the design, construction and operation of the world's infrastructure."

The over 20 000 firms representing more than 200 000 Bentley SELECT subscriber licences will soon be able to register projects for VIECON by going to www.viecon.com

Bentley SA

(011) 482 3262

tex.vandeventer@bentley.nl

www.bentley.com