Bentley Systems have been experiencing excellent growth with ProjectWise, its engineering document and content management solution.

The successes of the 15 active sites in South Africa have rubbed off and another two major companies will be deploying ProjectWise in the next month. Negotiations with four more companies are at an advanced stage, making a successful engineering document management solution.

MicroStation, AutoCAD and ESRI support

"Our success stems from two factors" says Tex van Deventer, managing director of Bentley Systems South Africa. "On the one hand our position as the supplier of design technology to the world's premier companies means that we are involved in the world's top projects. And large projects cannot be executed without proper document management, especially not with the distributed nature of the modern project teams. On the other hand Bentley is not blinkered into believing that we are the only supplier of engineering information. We try and cater for the engineering audience, not only the Bentley MicroStation user. Currently ProjectWise handles AutoCAD files as well with the ability to handle ESRI files mere months away."

ProjectWise allows one to unify project information into a single environment, so that anyone on the project team could easily access it and also manages the interface between engineering and corporate document management systems, project management systems, and external project websites - from design through construction into operations.

Effective management of engineering work in progress can result in faster schedules and lowered cost of distributing engineering information throughout the project, plant, or enterprise. ProjectWise assists by:

* Speed and streamline the checking process using the powerful redlining capabilities.

* Reduce time lost searching and waiting for engineering information to arrive, reducing the number of billable hours wasted and overall project costs.

* Avoid mistakes and mitigate project risks by ensuring that decisions are made from the right version of the right information.

* Minimise the cost of distributing engineering information throughout the extended project team or throughout the enterprise.

* Connect islands of information and leverages existing networks, Internet connections, servers, engineering information and documents, and isolated data sources.

ProjectWise facilitates straight-through processing of engineering content by providing:

* Engineering content management capabilities.

* Native MicroStation and AutoCAD application integration.

* Document controls.

* Publishing and plotting solutions.

Document Publisher

ProjectWise Document Publisher is a comprehensive office publishing tool that publishes over 200 native file formats into HTML on demand with accessibility in the ProjectWise Explorer. Formats include DTP files such as Corel, PageMaker, the full suite of Office products including 'MS Projects', PowerPoint and many CAD formats. ProjectWise Document Publisher provides access to office documents regardless of source or format.

Project managers can allow project members to:

* See progress through engineering or CAD files.

* View the project schedule to see if events are on track.

* Review construction materials.

* See site photographs and project renderings.

* Review invoices.

* Redline engineering drawings.

* Organise change order information.

* Manage correspondence.

For more information: Bentley Systems South Africa, 011 462 5811.