Microprotol for pressure analysis and SpecWave for specification data extend Bentley’s ability to serve its ENR 500 customers.

Bentley today announced two acquisitions to strengthen its ability to organize and manage the ever-increasing amounts of data being generated by large infrastructure projects. Microprotol is a tool for design and analysis of high-pressure plant fixtures; SpecWave allows specification documentation to be incorporated into the BIM environment.

Bentley made the announcements at the first day of its annual BE Inspired conference for senior-level executives in its customer base, in Amsterdam. The two acquisitions continue Bentley’s trend of tuck-in acquisitions that extend its ability to gather, process, and disseminate construction project and operations data. Terms of both deals were not disclosed.

EuResearch and Microprotol

Bentley acquired EuResearch, the boutique French software and consulting firm behind Microprotol. It currently has more than 400 customers using its pressure vessel design and analysis software. Bentley says it will add Microprotol to its existing AutoPlant suite, allowing plant design firms to incorporate the results of Microprotol in their work. Bentley says it will soon deliver new “comprehensive performance simulation solutions.”

Former EuResearch CEO Gerard Malhaire, now a consultant to Bentley, says, “We will enable more complete information modeling for all high-pressure plant environments, leading to plant structures that can be delivered more quickly, and that are safer and more cost-effective to operate.”

Certification of pressure vessels is still largely a manual process of paper transmittals with unavoidable delays; Microprotol is designed to provide a digital alternative.

SpecWave

SpecWave is the product of Leon Gorbaty and Adam Klatzkin, former Bentley employees who went out on their own to start The Engineering Essentials Company and write SpecWave. Bentley says the two created software that “[makes it] possible to reach inside structured documents to parse and organize [specification] content at the semantic level.” Bentley was an early investor in TEEC, as was the Construction Sciences Research Foundation.

SpecWave provides an editing environment for specification writers, offering attributes and tagging enforced by templates. It also provides the user with specification-driven process support for submittals, quality assurance, and related workflows. The resulting SPECX files have already been accepted as an endorsed standard by Fiatech, the consortium of large construction firms and owner/operators focused on improving AEC technology.