Bentley Systems Joins as a Multinational Member – Announces Support of IFC for Digital Twins

London, U.K. - October 23, 2019 - buildingSMART International is delighted to welcome Bentley Systems to the community. Bentley Systems, Incorporated is the leading global provider of comprehensive software and digital twin cloud services for advancing the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure.

Bentley Systems joins as a multinational member bringing a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the standards and solutions program.

At the same time, Bentley announced the availability of iModel Bridge for IFC, a generic IFC bridge that enables Bentley’s iModels to consume IFC geometry and business data. iModels are specialized containers for infrastructure information that are at the heart of Bentley’s digital twins strategy for infrastructure engineering. iTwin Services now enable iModels to export snapshots in IFC and treat IFC datasets as an input source, aligning their content for use by Bentley’s design applications.

Earlier this year, Bentley announced the availability on GitHub of version 1.0 of iModel.js, an open source platform for digital twins. 

Bhupinder Singh, Bentley’s chief product officer, said: “Bentley is committed to supporting the best implementation of IFC for digital twins. We are committed to openness, and in fact we’re making plans to open source iModel Bridge for IFC. The combination of IFC support and open source principles should give the community confidence that they can create and curate digital twins without being boxed in by dark data.”

Richard Petrie, CEO, buildingSMART International said, “I am delighted that Bentley has joined buildingSMART International. As one of the major software vendors in our field, Bentley plays a critical role in our community. The vision Bentley has for iModels and open source offers the IFC community exciting new possibilities for open interoperable ways of working with digital twins.”

About buildingSMART International

buildingSMART International is a vendor-neutral and not for profit body that leads the development of open digital information flows across the built asset industry. Its mission is to proactively support industry participants who want to develop open standards for planning, design, procurement, assembly and operation of buildings and infrastructure worldwide. It provides the international network plus the necessary technical and process support. Its members, who range from across the built environment spectrum, collaborate under the buildingSMART organization. buildingSMART is engaged with other international standards bodies such as ISO, the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). Its core Industry Foundation Class (IFC) standards achieved ISO approval in 2012

About Bentley Systems 

Bentley Systems is the leading global provider of software solutions to engineers, architects, geospatial professionals, constructors, and owner-operators for the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure, including public works, utilities, industrial plants, and digital cities. Bentley’s MicroStation-based open modeling applications, and its open simulation applications, accelerate design integration; its ProjectWise and SYNCHRO offerings accelerate project delivery; and its AssetWise offerings accelerate asset and network performance. Spanning infrastructure engineering, Bentley’s iTwin Services are fundamentally advancing BIM and GIS to 4D digital twins.  

Bentley Systems employs more than 3,500 colleagues, generates annual revenues of $700 million in 170 countries, and has invested more than $1 billion in research, development, and acquisitions since 2014. From inception in 1984, the company has remained majority-owned by its five founding Bentley brothers. www.bentley.com

Bentley, the Bentley logo, AssetWise, Citilabs, ContextCapture, CUBE, iTwin, iTwin Services, LEGION, MicroStation, OpenCities, OpenCities Map, OpenCities Planner, OpenFlows, OpenGround, OpenRoads, Orbit GT, Pointools, ProjectWise, Streetlytics, and SYNCHRO are either registered or unregistered trademarks or service marks of Bentley Systems, Incorporated or one of its direct or indirect wholly owned subsidiaries. All other brands and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.