Bentley Systems Inc announced the winners of the Year in Infrastructure 2019 Awards. The awards honour the extraordinary work of Bentley users in advancing design, construction and operations of infrastructure globally. CW reports from Singapore...No one dies in the digital world! If the world were a game and we could recreate every participant of the game, we can always go ‘back to start’ or simply ‘restart’. Just ask Bentley Systems Inc, the leading global provider of comprehensive software and digital twin cloud services for advancing the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure. The company is now empowering builders, developers, architects, and engineers to recreate infrastructure assets digitally by creating their ‘digital twins’.On October 24, Bentley continued its tradition of acknowledging and felicitating its 18 Infrastructure Awards winners and nine Special Recognition Awards winners at the conclusion of its Year in Infrastructure 2019 Conference in Singapore. Twelve independent jury panels of industry experts selected 54 finalists from 571 nominations submitted by over 440 user organisations in more than 60 countries. The conference also witnessed the launch of exciting new solutions at a time when infrastructure creation is becoming highly digitalised and precision-driven.New iTwin Cloud services for infrastructure engineering digital twinsBentley Systems announced new cloud services for infrastructure engineering digital twins. Digital twins are digital representations of physical assets and their engineering information that allow users to understand and model their performance in the real world over their life-cycle. In effect, ‘evergreen’ digital twins advance building information modelling (BIM) and geographic information system (GIS) through 4D.“Today the ‘digital twin era’ is underway, and its pace accelerates every day,” observed Keith Bentley, Founder & Chief Technology Officer. “The early adopters we have worked with are already staking out leadership positions in the new digital twin economy, towards innovations in both their business processes and their business models. The advantages gained by replacing decades-old, disconnected paper-based workflows and work products with open, live, trusted, and evergreen digital twins are immense.”iTwin Services enable engineering firms to create, visualise and analyse digital twins of infrastructure projects and assets. They federate digital engineering content from BIM design tools and multiple data sources, enable 4D visualisation of digital twins, and log engineering changes along a project or asset timeline, to provide an accountable record of ‘who changed what and when’. Engineering teams are using iTwin Services to conduct design reviews, validate design data, and generate design insights.In fact, digital twin advancements featured in 24 finalist projects in 15 categories in project locations across 14 countries ranging from transportation, water networks and treatment plants, to power stations, steel plants and buildings. Overall, 139 nominations in 17 categories cited digital twin objectives for the innovations used on their projects, which was a significant increase from 29 such nominations in 2018.Accelerated focus on infrastructure engineering for digital citiesThe company also presented its new digital cities initiatives, applying digital twins for enhanced city and regional operations and more connected and resilient infrastructure. Digital twins converge 4D-surveyed and engineering representations of assets to enable new collaborative digital workflows to serving planners and engineers in public works, utilities, property management and development, and city stakeholders.“The major technical thrust of Bentley Systems is the advancement of digital twins across infrastructure domains,” said Greg Bentley, CEO, Bentley Systems. “This finally opens up for owners their previously ‘dark’ engineering technologies and data for federation with traditional information technology and newly connected operating technologies.”City-scale digital twins begin and are updated through 4D surveying and use of reality modelling software such as ContextCapture and Orbit GT to derive as-operated 3D models from photogrammetry, including from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV)s and/or point clouds. Reality modelling provides engineering-precise, real-world context to support planning, design, construction and operations. Users of Bentley’s open applications can leverage this digital context to model new and improved buildings, roads, transit systems, tunnels, bridges, utilities, and more.4D digital twins become a common and federating index for previously siloed information, without requiring source systems to change their existing environments or data formats. The foundation context for any digital twin includes reality meshes, terrain models, imagery and GIS sources. Engineering models from any BIM software of buildings, streets, transit systems, utilities and other city infrastructure, both surface and subsurface, are semantically aligned and geo-referenced to enhance the richness and relevance of digital twins over time.Bentley Systems, Topcon Positioning Systems JV opens for businessBentley Systems and Topcon Positioning Systems, a world leader in positioning technology for the survey and construction industries, also announced that their JV firm, Digital Construction Works, was open for business. Digital Construction Works will provide digital automation, integration and ‘twinning’ services around a portfolio of fit-for-purpose software and cloud services, from Topcon, Bentley and other software vendors, to realise the breakthrough potential of ‘constructioneering’ for industrialising construction.Bentley Systems and Topcon joined forces in 2016 to jointly develop enhanced integration between their respective MAGNET and ProjectWise cloud services so that engineering and construction workflows could be integrated for improved project quality and performance.According to Greg Bentley, “The Digital Construction Works JV has the full management and capital commitments of both our companies, multiplying our unique strengths for helping to realise constructioneering's potential to close the world’s infrastructure gap.”And Ray O'Connor, President & CEO, Topcon Positioning Systems, opined, “Through the new organisation, companies will have the opportunity to integrate hardware and software capabilities to more quickly and efficiently adopt new technology for more rapid productivity improvements. With customised services to address the individual needs of an organisation, widespread adoption and technology improvements can be more readily realised.”Digital Construction Works is chartered to embed its experts within constructors’ major project teams to advance and optimise constructioneering processes for delivering better design-build outcomes. At the same time, experiences gained by Digital Construction Works will help guide Bentley Systems and Topcon in prioritising their constructioneering software development investments.  Winners of Year in Infrastructure 2019 Special Recognition Awards: Advancing Urban Planning through Digital Twins Civil Engineering and Development Department, Hong Kong SAR Government and AECOM, Hong Kong SARAdvancing Industrial Sustainability through Digital Twins MCC Capital Engineering & Research Incorporation, ChinaDigital Cities Award for Comprehensive Roadway Digital Twins Shenzhen Highway Engineering Consultant Co, ChinaDigital Cities Award for Comprehensive Water Digital Twins Águas do Porto, EM, PortugalAdvancing Infrastructure Resilience through Digital Twins Italferr SpA, ItalyAdvancing Construction Industrialisation through Digital Twins Heilongjiang Construction High-Tech Capital Group Co, ChinaAdvancing Economic Infrastructure through Digital Twins, CCCC Water Transportation Consultants Co (WTC), PakistanAdvancing Digital Workflows through Digital Twins Mott MacDonald/Systra Designers working with Balfour Beatty/Vinci JV, UKBentley Institute Knowledge Advancement Advocate Award Alison Watson, Chief Executive &Founder, Class of Your OwnWinners of Year in Infrastructure 2019 Awards for Going Digital Advancements in Infrastructure: 4D Construction: Mortenson, Clark, USBridges: PT Wijaya Karya (Persero) Tbk, IndonesiaBuildings and Campuses: Voyants Solutions, BangladeshCommunications and Utilities: PowerChina Hubei Electric Engineering Co, ChinaDigital Cities: Shanghai Investigation, Design & Research Institute Co, Changjiang Ecological Environmental Protection Group Co, China   Geotechnical Engineering: ARUP Singapore, Tanjong Pagar Mixed Development SingaporeManufacturing: Hatch, CongoMining and Offshore Engineering: Shanghai Investigation, Design & Research Institute Co, China  Power Generation: Hunan Hydro & Power Design Institute, ChinaProject Delivery: South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT), USRail and Transit: Italferr SpA, ItalyReality Modelling: MMC Gamuda KVMRT (T) SdnBhd, MalaysiaRoad and Rail Asset Performance: Lebuhraya Borneo Utara Sdn Bhd, MalaysiaRoads and Highways: Foth Infrastructure & Environment, LLC, USStructural Engineering: WSP, UKUtilities and Industrial Asset Performance: EPCOR Utilities, CanadaWater and Wastewater Treatment Plants: Jacobs Engineering Group and Singapore’s National Water Agency, PUB, SingaporeWater, Wastewater and Stormwater Networks: Balfour Beatty, Morgan Sindall, BAM Nuttall Joint Venture, UK