The annual Bentley Forum, held in Sandton on 1 August this year, provided a creative platform for engineers and designers to learn and gain practical experience. The Forum is always a highlight on the calendar and this year was no exception. The presentations were of a very high standard and workshops well attended. Many questions from existing as well as potential users were addressed.

Tex van Deventer, Managing Director Bentley Africa, presented the keynote speech. He described his vision for the future of Bentley in South Africa and in Africa specifically, highlighting the specific role to be played in upgrading the infrastructure in Africa. By being at the forefront of technology Bentley Systems has grown to one of the major engineering project software developers and has a key role to play in future developments.

What has distinguished Bentley Systems and what has contributed to their success is the ability to address the engineering process as a whole with integrated solutions. MicroStation, as the foundation to most of the engineering applications, is still being implemented in sound numbers. But increasingly the success of Bentley is specifically for engineering in the areas of process and plant, construction, civil engineering, mining, GIS, utilities and document management. Another major focus is that of project participation. Therefore the development of Internet-based Viecon.com, a project website service that will greatly enhance global project participation. Both these areas provide the ideal solution to the problems experienced with infrastructure creation and upgrading.

The highlight of the Forum was the awards received by Bentley users. Each won a trip to the Bentley International User Conference in Philadelphia USA held in September.

The winners were:

* Bertie Opperman, Spoornet. Best visualisation project.

Project: Design of new clamp lock for rails.

Program: MicroStation Modeler.

* Engineering team of LC Consulting. Best building and construction project.

Project: Various construction projects.

Program: MicroStation Triforma.

* Brett Forbes, VKE. Best GIS project.

Project: Mount Edgecombe.

Program: MicroStation GeoGraphics.

* Rafi Skulnik, Anglo American. Best Document Management project.

Project: Anglo American Technical Services Document Management.

Program: ProjectWise.

* Dawid Muller, Polifin. Best process plant and piping project.

Project: Capturing and redesign of Polifin plant in Sasolburg.

Program: PlantSpace.

Bentley users are encouraged to submit their projects as soon as possible to be eligible for the awards next year.

Many new packages and upgrades were announced at the Forum, of which Viecon.com is probably the most exciting. Viecon.com is Bentley System's project extranet offering and is designed to maximise the effectiveness of engineering, construction and operations networks by allowing members of project teams to create, communicate and collaborate efficiently over the Internet.

Although the concept might be unfamiliar in South Africa, many international engineering companies use the concept with great success. In its capacity as the 'situation room' for the project, Viecon.com vastly improves the coordination of interrelated efforts. It facilitates and records the communications between and among owners, design teams, contractors, suppliers and other project participants. It can also be used as a secure and convenient way to share selected files between team members.

The Viecon.com (pronounced veecon.com) concept has already made quite an impact in the US market. At the recent A/E/C 2000 show it won the Cadence Show Stopper and the Cadalyst Top 10 awards. According to David Weisberg, Publisher & Editor, A-E-C Automation, Viecon.com is "Perhaps the most important development in software for the E/C/O in recent years....in one way or another, this offering will become the on-line backbone for everyone involved in the design, construction and operation of complex facilities."

Other upgrades and releases include:

* ModelServer Discovery v2.1.

* GeoGraphics Enterprise.

* MicroStation ReproGraphics 7.1 + OCR.

* MicroStation Descartes 7.1 with batch rasterisation and DGN files.

* ModelServer Imager 2.0.

www.bentley.com

Bentley Africa

(011) 482 3262

bentley.sa@bentley.nl

www.bentley.com