Bentley Software's "The Year in Infrastructure"

Bentley Software published their "Year in Infrastructure" book last month, which provides an overview of product / solution strategy, as well as highlighting winners of the BE Awards. As mentioned in previous posts, I was invited to judge two BE categories for technology excellence: "Sustainability" and "Sustaining the Environment". This book details those winners, as well as in other categories such as bridges, water, buildings, and transportation.

The 'e-book' version can be found via this link:

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/bemagazine/beawards08/ Read more!

Trends in Energy Analysis, from the BE 2008 conference

One of the presentations at the Bentley BE 2008 conference I had a chance to view was by Drury Crawley; Team Leader of Commercial Buildings R&D at DOE (Dept. of Energy).

(Side note: his title is WAY long……but he knows it, too….).

He covered trends in energy analysis, high performance buildings, and new business models for sustainability in buildings and facilities. I thought his high – level view of where the buildings / facility industry is going was very interesting, and it re-iterates a number of issues that I have seen in my work. Key themes included:

• Consolidation of the Buildings industry (mergers & acquisitions)
• Worker Health / Productivity / Comfort
• Green House Gas (GHG) inventory and management (note: 39% of carbon emissions come from buildings….)
• Green Buildings
• Zero Energy Buildings (ZEB)
• Energy Services Companies (ESCOs)
• Bioterrorism

Some thoughts on his presentation and viewpoints are below:

Water

Evaluating the impact of buildings on WAGES (Water, Air, Gas, Electric, Steam), Crawley cited figures indicating that buildings (including the electric power required) account for 45% of water use in the US alone. Not including electrical power, domestic use is 100 gpd per capita, and total water use considering the impact of electrical power generation is 140 Billion gallons a day. While most of the industry is currently focusing on driving down energy use and costs in buildings as a first step in achieving sustainability, it is clear that the ‘delta’ for improving water resource conservation is very high, and should also provide a strong market driver for adoption of technologies to maximize conservation and efficiency of water use in buildings.

Building Simulation

Similar to the advent of intelligent modeling driving adoption of green technologies (which I posted on here), Crawley maintains that building simulation allows for earlier decision making in the design – build process, particularly as it relates to energy use and analysis. In regards to technology, he sees the following major drivers: visualization, risk assessment (particularly for insurance), interoperability between systems, toxicity of the built environment, calculating ‘embodied’ energy via life cycle assessments (LCA), and integration of tools for thermal analysis, acoustics, and CFD for examples. It is clear that there is no one toolset to allow owners or consultants to conduct building simulations, and there is still a very strong need for training in simulation methodologies; not just the technology itself.

Another interesting point was that Green buildings and accreditation was driving the use of these simulation methodologies and tools; not higher energy costs.

Websites for more info on DOE’s commercial building R&D:

Buildings.energy.gov

http://www.energyplus.gov/

http://www.highperformancebuildings.gov/

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BE 2008.....every picture tells a story, don't it.....

Group photo of the jurors at the BE 2008 conference....I am casually dressed with the khakis on the left....

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Highlights from the Bentley BE 2008 Conference

This week I had the opportunity to attend the annual BE conference in Baltimore MD, hosted by Bentley Systems; a leading provider of design & construction technology solutions for infrastructure, government, and industry. I was invited to be a judge of sustainability technology submissions in the "BE Awards of Excellence"; Bentley's program to recognize innovative use of their technology in various settings.

Up to this year, categories have included those typically associated with infrastructure solutions: design innovation, project management, visualization, civil works, geospatial, plant design, and water systems, for examples. This year's conference theme was "Sustaining Infrastructure": sessions reflected the emphasis of building sustainability concepts into infrastructure solutions.

My role was to judge submissions in two new categories:"Sustaining Society" and "Sustaining the Environment". Since this was the first year for these categories, the submissions were quite varied in scope, detail, impacts, and type of technology used (Bentley's....). The winners were: CH2M Hill for an innovative design of a fish barrier system for water intake; and a Badlupar based water utility that designed and implemented upgraded water services (both delivery and quality) to local populations, with the additional goal of knowledge transfer to other Indian water agencies as well.

I think this was a very good start for incorporating sustainability metrics into their awards program, as well as integrating sustainability into the conference and company strategy as well. Indeed, CEO Greg Bentley talked at length about Bentley is managing their own carbon footprint, as well as building sustainability metrics & process into their solution strategy.
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Invited to be a Judge for Sustainability Awards at the Bentley BE Conference

I recently was invited to be a judge at "BE Conference 2008", sponsored by Bentley Systems. The categories I will be judging are "Sustaining Society" and "Sustaining the Environment". The BE conference typically covers innovative use of technologies in GIS, CAD, visualization, and collaborative project management; in verticals such as water, mining, process manufacturing, transportation, and federal government. This year's conference is focusing on "Best Practices in Sustainable Infrastructure"; the awards session will include submissions from a number of services and end user organizations who have demonstrated innovative technology applications within the broad sector of sustainability.

The conference will be held in Baltimore MD on May 27 - 30 2008; registration link is here. Read more!