AECOM, Bentley Systems Announce Strategic Partnership

AECOM’s Kevin Albright speaks at the Year in Infrastructure 2015 Conference in London.

Photo Credit: Photo by Janice L. Tuchman/ENR

AECOM and Bentley Systems announced a strategic partnership Nov. 2 at Bentley’s “Year in Infrastructure” conference in London. The 100,000-employee engineer-constructor is a longtime user of Bentley’s ProjectWise collaboration platform, and the formal partnership will help standardize the firm’s global project delivery use of it.

“AECOM is an inaugural user of our Bentley Systems’ new enterprise cloud services subscription program,” said CEO Greg Bentley. The program gives AECOM full access to all Bentley’s mobile apps and services. “It’s rather radical for us,” he added, “but we think it’s the most fair and equitable way to introduce cloud services.” Organizations will set their subscription level to an annual budget according to anticipated use, but only be charged for actual usage. Any balance rolls forward and never expires.

The annual Bentley event draws project teams from around the world to compete for honors in project excellence, innovation and technology implementation, and AECOM has five projects in the field of 54 finalists. One nomination for innovation in project delivery involved AECOM’s corporate rollout of ProjectWise to 20,000 users worldwide.

In a presentation about the work, Kevin Albright, AECOM global collaboration manager, described the multi-hub system “which enables project data to exist in multiple locations around the world.” Users in widespread offices see the same interface, files, folders and data, which are actually mirrored from hub to hub and change when new data is synched from cache servers. Bentley provided the platform, and “we build what rides on top,” Albright said.

“AECOM’s objective is to virtualize its talent across its clients’ projects,” added Greg Bentley. The company has been able to “virtually embed Bentley talent to help,” contributing assistance in configuration, monitoring and best practices, he said.

After serving as editor-in-chief for 20 years, Jan Tuchman now is executive editor, leading content development for Engineering News-Record's wide-ranging series of live and virtual events. These include the Groundbreaking Women in Construction, the Emerging Leaders Forum, FutureTech and infrastructure forums in the New York/New Jersey region and Los Angeles. Tuchman is the 2023-24 chair of the American Society of Civil Engineers Industry Leaders Council, she is a member of the Columbia University Center for Infrastructure, Facilities and Public Spaces, and she is active in The Moles, a heavy construction leadership organization. Her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism are from the University of Colorado in Boulder. Industry honors include the Ted C. Kennedy Award from the National Academy of Construction and the service and supply award from the Beavers. She lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and enjoys singing in the Brooklyn Community Chorus.

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