Digital transformation for energy water utilities and real estate

The second day of Bentley Systems ' Infra Week Asia Pacific webinar dealt with digital transformation for water utilities, digital transformation for energy utilities and integrated project controls for real estate. It was divided into three sessions with industry experts holding forth on the latest challenges, opportunities and business practices.

Fergus Dunn, Regional Executive, Bentley Systems introduced the industry session on Digital Transformation for Water Utilities. Dunn spoke about the key challenges facing the water and electric sectors today and how digital transformation can rise up to meet challenges and create new opportunities.

Speaking on the main challenges in the water utilities sector, Slavco Velickov, Global Sales Director Asset Performance - Water & Map, Bentley Systems said, "First of all, every executive looks towards the safety and security of the water networks and infrastructure. The second business driver is reducing operating costs and total cost of water asset ownership. Another very important aspect is reliability and resilience in terms of calamities," Velickov added that sustainability was the fourth and final challenge.

Conrad Fernandez, Project Director, Water Loss Management Projects, SUEZ India gave insight about the global company's water and waste sectors, and how it helps cities and industries in the circular economy to preserve, optimize and secure the resources. Fernandez also presented case studies on the water management programs in several cities, including Kolkata, India.

Bentley's Hydraulic Modeling Tools were discussed by Suneet Manjavkar, Water Consultant, Bentley Systems who said, "The growth rate is imposing pressure on need and improvement of water, food, and energy services. At the same time, climate change and depletion of resources challenge the ability to provide such services at a cost-effective manner."

The US Energy Information Commission (EIA) has forecasted the demand for energy to increase by 50% by 2050. Ralph Dsouza, Senior Regional Manager, Asset & Network Performance, Bentley Systems highlighted the industry trends in the energy utilities space, some of the challenges that utilities are facing and how Bentley is helping utilities transition these challenges by going digital. "An accelerated adoption of digital technology is being predominantly led by the 4IR," said Dsouza.

Dsouza also talked about Bentley's strategic partnership with Microsoft and Siemens, and about Bentley being a founder of the Digital Twin Consortium. "By understanding the challenges and applying the technological advancements, Bentley is helping utilities achieve their business outcomes, be it around reliability, resilience, safety, or even improving service," added Dsouza.

Matthew Turvey, Senior Engineer, Zone Substation Design ofEssential Energy, a state-owned electricity infrastructure company in New South Wales, Australia, discussed return on investment, monitoring, maintenance of infrastructure, and the start to finish process of intelligent design using Bentley Suite. "As we know, the world is changing, and so does the need for the transition away from conceptual hard copy conventional design medium to the idea of a completely new digital platform," observed Turvey.

Kalyan Vaidyanathan, Director of Business Development, Bentley Systems talked about Integrated Project Controls for Real Estate and said, "What we need are bridges to convert islands of automation into insights and information." He added that the average American uses six apps related to construction but the apps are not interoperable.

"nPulse is the latest integrated project controls solution that makes engineering, infrastructure, and construction projects run faster and smarter via mobile collaboration, predictive analytics and immersive decision support," Vaiyanathan said, making a case for transitioning from common data environment to connected data environment in the real estate sector.

Arvind Subramanian, Managing Director & CEO, Mahindra Lifespace Developers spoke about the digitalization of Indian real estate. He contrasted the real estate sector with the automotive sector to paint a picture of how digitalization has benefited the latter while the former has been slower to evolve its processes. On Bentley's software integration solution, he said, "nPulse is a wonderful tool, it allows us to measure earned value in real time."

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