An interesting by-product of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the reworking of technologies to fulfill requirements presented by the need to work remotely, as well as address the way we will work on face-to-face projects that are essential to the AEC industry. The need to visualize large amounts of data will propel the expansion from data acquisition to data analytics and business and operational insights. Office spaces of the future may be repurposed for additive manufacturing as the maker community takes off with more entry-level machines, making it more accessible to more people. Drones are becoming smarter, and more field personnel are able to make use of them.
Industry predictions for 2021 launch from what technologies are in place, and which technologies have been relied upon during the Covid-19 pandemic. Even after the pandemic scare is over, industry professionals believe there will be a heightened need for technologies such as AR/VR/MR/XR to allow staff to collaborate remotely. Digital twins, remote working, off-site manufacturing, hybrid work situations and new ways of handling volumes of data are all predicted for the future, as fortunately they were already tools we could utilize before the pandemic.
What will we look forward to in technology trends, design trends, and developments in BIM in 2021? Artificial intelligence and machine learning will help the “aided” in computer aided design, according to Piet Lelieur of BricsCAD. For GRAPHISOFT, the machine-driven process tends to clash with creative disciplines such as architecture – however, according to Akos Pfemeter, we see examples of the ways it can assist in construction security, generative design, and other areas.
It goes without saying that the Covid-19 virus has upended our lives and industries around the world beyond most people’s imagination and not in a good way. Most people I speak with want 2020 to end, eager to herald the start of a new year and new beginnings.
Year in Infrastructure 2020 Executive Perspectives held on October 29th, 2020 with Greg Bentley and Satya Nadella featured discussions with the following executives:
Greg Bentley, CEO, Bentley Systems
Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft
Nicholas Cumins, Chief Product Officer, Bentley Systems
Katriona Lord-Levins, Chief Success Officer, SVP, Bentley Systems
Chris Bradshaw, Chief Marketing Officer, Bentley Systems
To begin with, Greg Bentley spoke about the past year at Bentley Systems:
Greg Bentley, CEO, Bentley Systems
“This year has been about confluence of infrastructure and resilience. We have been a privately held company for 36 years and now publicly held. Those interested can view our investor relations website with all our performance listed there. BSY is the ticker symbol for Bentley on NASDAQ. Usage in our apps hit a trough earlier in the year yet returned to earlier levels by June. Infrastructure engineering is mission critical; professionals are able to be virtualized, advancement in going digital is greater this year as well as in 4D construction modeling. We’ll continue to see that grows every year as construction is about occupancy of space and time and that’s ever more important after a pandemic and forever.
800 Bentley colleagues are working on solutions with digital twins on perils we may not know and anticipate. Our own colleagues have been virtualized working at home, working on work-at-home for users as well.
Digital Twins for Infrastructure Resilience Infrastructure
Infrastructure resilience sustains our economy and environment. Infrastructure is advanced by infrastructure engineering and empowered by infrastructure engineering software, so we recognize our responsibility as an infrastructure engineering software company. For investors we inform them, break revenues down by end market. (more…)
Eduardo Lazzarotto, Bentley Systems, Director, Product Management and Susanne Trierscheid, Bentley Systems, Senior Director, Facilities Engineering spoke with AECCafe Voice regarding their new releases in the latter part of this year. Their biggest product is OpenBuildings, within the Buildings and Campuses portfolio of Bentley.
This year’s Bentley Year In Infrastructure event was as most conferences this year, held remotely. Media representatives from over 28 countries attended the event.
Ray Bagley, business area director for Trimble Connect, spoke with AECCafe Voice regarding their latest announcement of new integrations for Microsoft 365 and BIMcollab with Trimble Connect cloud based collaboration platform. Users of both platforms will enjoy a common data environment for connecting project stakeholders with data necessary to inform decisions and improve team efficiency.
Vectorworks, Inc. has launched Vectorworks 2021 with what they call a continued emphasis on improving product quality, performance and the user experience. This latest release includes the 2021 versions of Vectorworks Architect, Landmark, Spotlight, Designer and Fundamentals, as well as 2021 versions of Vision, Braceworks and ConnectCAD.
