Construcciones Yamaro: GHD and Bentley Systems’ collaboration spotlighted at Illuminate
Esteemed leaders from the construction sector recently gathered at Bentley Systems’ Illuminate event, underscoring the essential role of collaborative industry relationships in achieving success.
A prime example highlighted at the event was the thriving collaboration between Bentley Systems (Bentley) and the engineering, architecture and construction services company GHD. Inside Construction spoke with Paul Murphy, chief information officer at GHD, and Mike Campbell, chief product officer at Bentley, to explore their foundation of collaboration and deep engagement.
Murphy said that GHD has been using Bentley products for over 15 years, but had recently sought to forge a much closer relationship with technology providers.
“Our rationale for that was in our future, there was no potential to divorce technology from our ways of working and the work that we needed to do,” said Murphy. “We looked at how we could understand it and embrace it more, as well as create more value with the technology that we were purchasing rather than just treating it as a commodity.”
“Initially, Bentley was just a provider, but we continued to build the relationship and ways of working to the point where we had a greater ability to influence and understand Bentley’s work and how it met our needs as an industry participant.”
Campbell echoed these sentiments, emphasising the significant role that GHD’s influence had played in Bentley’s changes to its products. He noted that software providers, particularly Bentley, are evolving in their market engagement strategies.
“Thinking back 20 years, a client would pay for the software, receive a CD and the relationship would end there,” said Campbell. “Now, there’s this increased level of engagement, intimacy, and alignment of what we aspire to as partners.”
“A lot more effort goes into ensuring that we have a clear understanding of where our clients are going, and that our clients have a clear understanding of where we’re going – course-correcting along the way to ensure we’re not diverging.”
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Illuminate underscored that collaboration is vital for the construction industry’s future success, with Murphy noticing a growing trend towards collaborative frameworks.
“We have joint ventures and alliances, and, as I heard from various speakers at Bentley Illuminate, we no longer have projects that are single entities,” said Murphy. “Large megaprojects involve multiple technologies and multiple participants across construction, design, and operations.”
Murphy stressed the need for a more efficient ecosystem. “For me, it’s about understanding how that ecosystem works so that it’s more efficient in its interactions and operations, rather than each [industry] participant having different standards, ways of working, and data schemas,” he said. “That whole process of learning and re-learning on every single project is wasted value.”
“The more we can treat the industry as an ecosystem and find ways for the industry to be more efficient, the better it will be for consumers and for society at large.”
In his keynote at Illuminate, Campbell categorised the construction industry’s challenges into four areas: complexity, data fragmentation, resource shortages, and climate concerns. He noted the increasing demand for construction and infrastructure, driven by population growth and the need for sustainable development.
“There’s a lot going on, and a lot of reasons for us to get together, get aligned and make sure we’re all working together,” said Campbell.
Murphy noted that some Illuminate speakers looked at the resourcing challenge from an education, development, and training perspective. However, he emphasised that the industry should focus human expertise on tasks that require it, while automating processes that can be performed by machines.
“We still want humans to be making critical decisions; we want humans to be involved where there is a need for sensing, emotion and feeling,” said Murphy. “But production of plans on a page, for example, has to be looked at as an opportunity for growth and improvement with technology.”
Expanding on this idea, Campbell stressed the need for better knowledge reuse in the industry. He highlighted cases where contractors, starting new projects, essentially begin from scratch.
“Whereas there could be reuse of other ideas,” said Campbell. “The challenge is, how do they find this information? How do they know what the considerations were when that idea was implemented previously? How can they find out how well that implemented idea is performing today?”
“If we can make all of that information more accessible, perhaps knowledge reuse will increase. Again, it will allow people to focus on true added value, creative work, as opposed to possibly redoing what may have already been done in the past.”
Looking ahead, Murphy believes that simulation and scenario technology, which allows for testing hypotheses about the future at a macro level, will play a significant role in the construction industry’s success.
“If we knew, for example, what the growth projections were in a local catchment area, we could run the scenarios so that we’re capturing the future intent or the future need of that area,” said Murphy. “Then, we’re able to make sequencing decisions based on the future, not just the current.”
While acknowledging that some constraints might necessitate decisions based on available capital today, Murphy emphasised the importance of genuine long-term planning: “How can we establish genuine 10, 15, and 20-year strategic planning cycles, and then align our efforts with those cycles? I believe that technology, particularly through simulation analytics scenarios and infrastructure digital twins, can facilitate these opportunities by considering hypothetical situations.”
“The other part of the conversation was really about complexity. My belief is that we are getting to a point where the world and the expectation on humans is becoming so difficult that we can’t intuitively see the complexity that exists around many of these megaprojects or decisions.
“We have to use some of the data and analytics – some historical, some future scanning – to help us with those decisions.”
This valuable perspective establishes the right context for Bentley’s current strategy. The company aims to provide the capabilities that will allow for these kinds of exercises to be performed.
So, what’s next for Bentley and GHD? Murphy said it has been interesting seeing Bentley evolve over the last 12 months.
“How Bentley is evolving into a technology company for the future is really interesting to me personally,” he said. “There’s a strategic shift in how Bentley is leading its industry relationships.”
“From a straight GHD perspective, as we look at the next five years, and maybe the next 10 years, technology becomes far more integrated into everything that we do.
“Whether it’s our relationships with other technology partners or our relationships with companies like Bentley, it’s at the heart of what we do and what we need to do more of. So, how companies like Bentley support us in our transformation is really important.”
Cooperation between organisations like GHD and technology providers such as Bentley are collectively accelerating learning and adaptation in ways never seen before. The Illuminate event highlighted the value of this collaborative approach in addressing industry challenges and propelling the construction sector toward success.
The post GHD and Bentley Systems’ collaboration spotlighted at Illuminate appeared first on Inside Construction.
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