Siemens, Bentley strengthen partnership

Written by William C. Vantuono, Editor-In-Chief, Railway Age
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Siemens AG and Bentley Systems are extending an existing 2016 agreement and have embarked on a new software offering.

Siemens AG and Bentley Systems are extending their existing 2016 agreement “to further develop their joint business cooperation and commercial initiatives.” The two companies at the same time embarked on a new software offering.

At the companies’ latest Alliance Board meeting, Bentley Systems and Siemens decided to “further strengthen their strategic alliance” by extending their existing agreement to further develop their joint business cooperation and commercial initiatives. A joint innovation investment program will be increased from the initial €50 million funding to €100 million. In addition, as a result of the continuous investment of Siemens into secondary shares of Bentley’s common stock, the Siemens stake in Bentley Systems now exceeds 9%.

“I’m pleased with how strong our alliance started,” said Siemens AG Managing Board member Klaus Helmrich. “Now we are investing in the next collaboration level with Bentley, where for instance we will strengthen their engineering and project management tools with Siemens enterprise wide collaboration platform Teamcenter to create a full Digital Twin for the engineering and construction world. Integrated company-wide data handling and IoT connectivity via MindSphere will enable our mutual customers to benefit from the holistic Digital Twins.”

“In our joint investment activities with Siemens to date, we have progressed worthwhile opportunities together with virtually every Siemens business for ‘going digital’ in infrastructure and industrial advancement,” said Greg Bentley. “As our new jointly offered products and cloud services now come to market, we are enthusiastically prioritizing further digital co-ventures. We have also welcomed Siemens’ recurring purchases of non-voting Bentley Systems stock on the NASDAQ Private Market, which we facilitate in order to enhance liquidity, primarily for our retiring colleagues.”

Teamcenter® plus ProjectWise

Siemens PLM Software and Bentley Systems are combining the former’s Teamcenter® portfolio with Bentley’s ProjectWise and its Connected Data Environment (CDE) into “an integrated solution for enterprises to deliver capital projects more efficiently.” Teamcenter is described as “the world’s most widely used product lifecycle management (PLM) system.” ProjectWise is a project delivery collaboration platform for 43 leading design firms. The new offering “continues Siemens’ and Bentley’s strategic alliance, and will uniquely extend enterprise visibility across capital project engineering and construction program management,” the companies stated.

“In going digital, the work of engineers and constructors is increasingly about the digital context and digital components around, and within, their infrastructure projects,” said Bentley Systems CEO Greg Bentley. “As we industrialize project delivery, it is exciting for us to be working with Siemens to extend the reach of our CDE’s digital workflows beyond individual capital projects. With the Teamcenter PLM integration, the connections of project Digital Twins* can expand into their enterprise context and drill down into their manufactured components—advancing infrastructure through digital DNA.

“The leading capabilities for systems engineering and requirements management within Teamcenter, and lifecycle simulation of engineered components, are now complemented by Bentley’s CDE to take advantage of a project Digital Twin. Project Digital Twins automate digital alignment and change synchronization across the project supply chain, enabling continuous and comprehensive status reviews. Digitalizing a plant from the beginning of a project enables the aggregation and dissemination of data in a scalable and manageable fashion. By connecting Digital Twins with a consistent digital thread, companies can reduce project delivery costs and avoid cost overruns, and can improve operational margins by increasing plant productivity and reducing operational overhead. Enterprises can now achieve consistent digital workflows that span project economics, program management and project controls to speed up capital project delivery, reduce cost overruns and improve fit-for-purpose project outcomes.”

“Owner/operators and engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firms in the industry need to lower costs and deliver projects more efficiently, and this new digital solution facilitates data-driven business processes for the optimization of projects and the plant,” said Siemens PLM Software CEO Tony Hemmelgarn. “Powered by the Digital Twins, this solution allows engineering data to flow between capital project stakeholders, and will support a broad set of industry use cases.”

* A Digital Twin is a digital replica of physical assets, processes and systems that can be used for various purposes.

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