BENTLEY-SYSTEMS
11.3.2020 17:16:06 CET | Business Wire | Press release
Bentley Systems, Incorporated, a leading global provider of comprehensive software and digital twins services for advancing the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure, today announced the acquisition of GroupBC , a leading UK SaaS software innovator. For over twenty years, GroupBC’s and Bentley’s software solutions have been deployed for complementary purposes to improve project and asset information management. The transaction results from GroupBC’s expansion agenda, and Bentley’s investment appetite, for international growth opportunities stemming from the UK’s national initiatives for major infrastructure investment and towards infrastructure digital twins.
GroupBC’s CDE solutions, BC Projects and BC Enterprise+ , have been widely applied in the UK for information management respectively across construction and asset estates. Largely due to the UK’s substantiated ROI experience and its global thought leadership, CDEs have become increasingly availed globally in “going digital” for capital projects and resulting assets. In 2019, the UK’s (BS 1192) construction project information management guidelines were largely adopted within the global standard ISO 19650.
Also in 2019, in its inaugural study of the overall market for Collaborative BIM, ARC Advisory Group ranked Bentley’s ProjectWise system as #1 worldwide. The new opportunity is to build on ISO 19650, and GroupBC’s UK information management experience, to advance collaborative BIM, through “evergreen” digital twins, to span infrastructure lifecycles. In combination, Bentley’s iTwin Services will now be leveraged to uniquely connect GroupBC CDEs and ProjectWise CDEs. Through semantic alignment and change synchronization, the resulting digital twins cloud services will securely federate – fully enabling 4D mixed reality and analytics visibility – previously separate CDEs for construction and engineering.
Keith Bentley, Chief Technology Officer for Bentley Systems, said, “Our iTwin cloud services, taking advantage of iModel-based solutions for interoperability, are ideal for federating CDEs. This enables us to assure that the users of our BC SaaS services will benefit from further extending the value of their project and asset information through digital twins. With the help of our new GroupBC colleagues, we will now be able to better serve engineers, contractors, and owners by bringing together their collective IT (information management), OT (operational technologies including reality modeling), and ET (engineering models). I am confident that the resulting improvements in project and asset performance will be consistent with the UK’s demanding but welcome expectations for new ROI breakthroughs from digital twins.”
Simon Horsley, UK regional executive for Bentley Systems, said, “Our many UK users, projects, and owners in common with GroupBC will gain a lot from our joining forces to advance CDEs through digital twins. I have been tasked by Bentley management to help the UK to continue to lead the world in going digital for infrastructure advancement, and our new offerings and colleagues from GroupBC bring essential momentum as we pool resources to meet our market’s expanded ‘infrastructure revolution’ requirements. I particularly welcome to Bentley Systems GroupBC’s co-founders Sanjeev Shah and Stephen Crompton, and CEO Wes Simmons.”
Sanjeev Shah, co-founder of GroupBC, said, “This is a hugely exciting day for our shared accounts and for both our workforces moving forward. The opportunities which arise from bringing our two companies and their respective product portfolios together are enormous, as is the global reach which Bentley can now add for us. Working together we will be even better able to support, through ‘going digital,’ construction and asset lifecycles.”
Stephen Crompton, CPO and co-founder of GroupBC, added, “Bentley is going to provide a great new home for our products to thrive in. GroupBC have always promoted an integrated, best-of-breed approach, and being able to complement our leading software solutions with existing best-of-breed products from Bentley presents a uniquely exciting opportunity for us and our user organizations, opening the door for unparalleled integration between our solutions and bridging the gaps between design, construction and ongoing asset information management.”
Wes Simmons, CEO of GroupBC, said, “Our founders and I would like to thank our equity partner YFM for their visionary support over the last five years. For our GroupBC team, customers, and partners, joining Bentley Systems ensures a future of continued growth, including beyond construction information management through broadly federated digital twins, and international expansion. Here’s to BC CDE and digital twins advancement!”
Image: https://www.bentley.com/-/media/Images/Press Release Images/2020/Group_BC_v2_Screens_1920x1080
Caption: GroupBC offers a highly secure, yet flexible common data environment (CDE), providing powerful document and information management in the cloud for construction projects and built assets.
About GroupBC
GroupBC has been developing enterprise-scale information management solutions for construction-related projects and asset owners since 1998. GroupBC’s extensible, UK hosted Common Data Environment (CDE) makes it easy for teams to collaborate, manage and share documents data and spatial information from a central, secure cloud-based platform.
GroupBC is renowned for pushing the boundaries of technology, integrating project and asset data with external systems and datasets in order to provide rich and valuable insights which enable timelier and better decision making. Customers include Balfour Beatty, Costain, Nationwide Building Society, Sainsbury’s and Thames Water.
www.groupbc.com
About Bentley Systems
Bentley Systems is a leading global provider of software solutions to engineers, architects, geospatial professionals, constructors, and owner-operators for the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure. Bentley’s MicroStation -based engineering and BIM applications, and its digital twin cloud services, advance the project delivery (ProjectWise ) and the asset performance (AssetWise ) of transportation and other public works, utilities, industrial and resources plants, and commercial and institutional facilities.
Bentley Systems employs more than 3,500 colleagues and generates annual revenues of more than $700 million in 172 countries. From inception in 1984, the company has remained majority-owned by its five founding Bentley brothers. www.bentley.com
Bentley, the Bentley logo, AssetWise, iTwin, MicroStation, and ProjectWise are either registered or unregistered trademarks or service marks of Bentley Systems, Incorporated or one of its direct or indirect wholly owned subsidiaries. All other brands and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200311005586/en/
Link:
About Business Wire
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Forrester’s 2027 Budget Planning Guides: After A Year Of Caution, Business And Tech Leaders Are Ready To Invest Again15.7.2026 11:00:00 CEST | Press release
While leaders are betting on growth, in the age of AI, spending more is no longer enough According to Forrester’s (Nasdaq: FORR) 2027 Budget Planning Guides, business and technology leaders are approaching 2027 with renewed confidence as they increasingly accept volatility as a permanent feature of the business environment. After a year of more cautious spending, more than 80% of leaders expect their budgets to increase over the next 12 months, with as many as one-quarter anticipating growth of 10% or more. But planning in the age of AI demands more than bigger budgets: Increasing investment without modernizing operating models, strengthening data foundations, and improving AI readiness will only accelerate fragmented data, duplicated work, and technical debt. To realize AI’s full potential, leaders must rethink their strategies and prioritize investments in operational foundations, governance, and experimentation that drive tangible outcomes. This year, optimism is widespread across f
Post-Quantum’s Algorithm - Classic McEliece - Achieves Global ISO Standardization to Protect the World From Quantum Cyber Attack15.7.2026 10:00:00 CEST | Press release
Ultra-secure encryption algorithm added to ISO standard for Asymmetric Ciphers Classic McEliece is first PQC algorithm to achieve global standardization Organisations in 177 ISO member states can now adopt Classic McEliece to remain secure from attack by both classical and quantum computers Governments including Germany and the Netherlands already recommend the highly secure Classic McEliece algorithm due to its unmatched security credentials It’s proven that today’s encryption is vulnerable to attack by a sufficiently mature quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm - a catastrophic event commonly known as Q-Day. Even before such a cryptographically relevant quantum computer emerges it is known that adversaries are stealing encrypted data now, which can be decrypted later - also known as Harvest Now, Decrypt Later (HNDL). Google’s recent use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to optimise Shor’s algorithm reduces the number of physical qubits required to break today’s encryption, therefor
Thredd Joins The Visa Agentic Ready Programme, Bringing Agent Network Readiness To Issuers Across Europe, Starting With Zilch15.7.2026 09:00:00 CEST | Press release
Thredd, the AI-first issuer processing platform, today announced it has joined the Visa Agentic Ready programme, enabling issuers across Europe to participate in agent-initiated payments without rebuilding their payments infrastructure. Consumer payments platform Zilch will be among the first issuers on the platform to enable agent-initiated payments for its cardholders. As a processor and enabler, Thredd sits at the trust layer of the payments ecosystem. By joining the programme, Thredd is ready to support Visa and its clients as the market moves into agentic commerce. Agentic commerce introduces a new type of payment initiator: An AI agent acting on a cardholder's behalf. The core payments principles do not change. Cardholder permission, issuer approval, authentication and fraud monitoring all still apply. What changes is how trust is established and enforced at the point an agent transacts. Taking a Zilch customer as an example, a cardholder might ask an AI agent to find a product w
Surgerii Robotics Announces First European Installation of the SHURUI® Single-Port Surgical System at Vall d'Hebron University Hospital15.7.2026 09:00:00 CEST | Press release
Surgerii Robotics today announced the first European installation of its SHURUI Single-Port (SP) Surgical System at Vall d'Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona, Spain, one of Europe's leading academic medical centers. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260713209503/en/ The first pediatric procedure performed with the SHURUI SP system was a nephroureterectomy on a twelve-year-old boy whose kidney and ureter had become infected and non-functional due to multiple stones. The SHURUI SP system is CE-marked for adult and pediatric use, making it the only CE-marked single-port robotic surgical system currently indicated for pediatric procedures in Europe. The installation marks an important milestone in the international expansion of Surgerii Robotics and the introduction of the technology into a major European reference center. As part of this collaboration, Vall d'Hebron University Hospital has become the first hos
SES, Airbus and Dutch Municipality of Noordwijk to Build Satellite Optical Ground Station for EAGLE-115.7.2026 08:50:00 CEST | Press release
The parties signed a ground lease agreement allowing installation of the optical ground station (OGS) at the NL Space Campus SES, a space solutions company, jointly with Airbus Netherlands B.V. signed a ground lease agreement with the Dutch municipality of Noordwijk for a plot at the NL Space Campus, next to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) technical center ESTeC. The facility will host a dedicated optical ground station (OGS) to communicate with the EAGLE-1 satellite and receive quantum safe keys via laser technology. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260714786947/en/ Breaking the ground of the EAGLE-1 Optical Ground Station, Municipality of Noordwijk, the Netherlands. Pictured left to right: Pim van Strien, Alderman for the Municipality of Noordwijk; Rob Postma, President and Managing Director, Airbus Netherlands; Alan Kuresevic, Managing Director, SES Techcom, SES. The station, to be built by Airbus for SES,
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom