Brazil in the sight of the next “Year in Infrastructure” Conference

In 2004 Bentley Systems launched the annual event known as the Be Awards, which later became known as Be Inspired. Beyond a simple award, in recent years we have seen that Baltimore Symposium has become a high-level conference not only in the use of technologies for modeling, design and infrastructure operation; this 2013 year we participated in presentations and discussion forums on necessary creativity for the projects management and operation.

Be there to the end worth the phrase, when at the event’s conclusion Greg, Bentley Systems CEO, came in front of the auditorium and said it in a tone which put finishing touch to my two weeks of travel and inspiration:

We created the Be Inspired to draw the attention of those who are holding the infrastructure market, and give them the credit for it.

London has been an example of the practice, in which the engineering applied to the Olympic Games has been demonstrated with impressive projects, an exercise that is beyond the ordinary in software selling. How a company in conjunction with private and public companies develop a modernization plan for 15 years, where the city intelligence is based on the life cycle of the infrastructure from the BIM outset.

It is interesting how Bentley rather than compete for market ESRI, AutoDesk and Intergraph have, decides to focus on a specific niche from the V8i; an ‘i’ which for them means the three main products: information modeling (applications on Microstation), projects integration (Project Wise) and intelligent infrastructure (Asset Wise). From there is their insistence for Top 500 Infrastructure owners’ research where there are public and private entities registered and ordered depending on the infrastructure investment they have. Excel in this ranking Brazil, Spain and Mexico from the Ibero-American context. It is also interesting to rescue other actors in the context, as SIEMENS with whom Bentley hopes to enter the manufacturing machinery market and Trimble that figure as the best example of bench-marketing between the information capture, modeling and operation… also we understand it at the medium term as an inevitable fusion (not just of BIM cycle), but surely with a more intelligence than the simple purchase happened to Intergraph / Leica / ERDAS after their acquisition by Hexagon.

Why Brazil?

Although, anyone would have supposed that the next event would be in China, the figures are not consistent. The America’s investment return for Bentley is much better than in Asia (43% of employees, 45% of profits) contrary to 26% /19% from Asia; it is also interesting how Colombia figure as the country with the highest growth in the adoption of its technology in 2013. It is known that America is still an attraction center after its atypical resistance to the big economic depressions (while all falling, Latin America grows). Regardless if it is can not fall more, we are aware that our continent’s potential and natural resources will become every day more attractive to international investment. In addition to this, there are several backgrounds why Brazil is the candidate for this event in the next two years, not only as a BRICS emerging power:

1. The Infrastructure 500 Top Owners indicates that Brazil is in 12th position in terms of value, but not in function of the amount, which denotes that the development and infrastructure operation is in large companies’ hands, contrary to India and Spain to give examples. We know the Bentley policy market, instead of searching many small clients focuses on large and strategic enterprises that will get value from their products in all their amplitude value.

2. In Brazil, next year will be developed the Soccer World Cup, and in 2016 the Olympic Games; events involving the construction of large infrastructure projects, but also an exercise of global visibility that makes it an unavoidable pole of investments.

3. The Char Pointer acquisition, creators’ company of TopoGRAPH software as a step towards an exaggerate market’s growth in Brazil by 25 % at a single stroke. We had seen Bentley positioning in Brazil on offshore platforms, power generation and transmission; with this we’ll see them entering a market that Char Pointer already has in terms of road infrastructures, rail and other activities related to territorial development.

With this, I could dare much to say that by 2015 – if not in 2014 – we’ll have the great conference Year in infrastructure, the Be Inspired and CIO Workshop in Sao Paulo.

So that:

se tudo correr como eu prevejo, lá estamos nós.

(in English from Portuguese) If everything goes as I predict, there we are.