Bentley Opens BE Conference 2008 Registration, Announces Keynotes by Leading Infrastructure Experts

Event Features BEst Practices for Sustaining Infrastructure and Keynote by Andrew Winston, Co-Author of Best-Seller ‘Green to Gold’

Exton, Pa. – April 10, 2008 – Bentley Systems, Incorporated today announced that registration is open at www.bentley.com/BEconference/registration for BE Conference 2008 – BEst Practices for Sustaining Infrastructure, being held May 28-30 at the Baltimore Convention Center in Baltimore, Md. During this two-and-a-half-day event, decision makers and senior practitioners from infrastructure organizations around the globe, including owner-operators and AEC firms, will share innovative best practices using Bentley solutions. Conference sessions will address the needs of executives, managers, architects, engineers, designers, builders, and other infrastructure professionals and include user-led content and programs dedicated to 10 “solutions communities”: BIM and Beyond, Bridge Information Modeling (BrIM), Cadastre and Land Development, Communications, Oil and Gas, Mining and Metals, Electric and Gas Utilities and Power Generation, Rail and Transit, Roads, and Water and Wastewater. The BE Conference 2008 keynote presentation will be made by Andrew Winston, founder of Winston Eco-Strategies and co-author of the best-seller “Green to Gold.”

Other presentations will be made by renowned thought leaders from some of the world’s most preeminent organizations, highlighted by:
• Walker Lee Evey, president and CEO, Design-Build Institute of America
“Trends and Challenges to Integrated Project Delivery”
• Rebecca L. Flora, AICP, LEED AP – U.S. Green Building Council,
USGBC executive committee chair, executive director Green Building Alliance “Beyond Green Buildings: A Road Map for Transforming Our Built Environment”
• Mark Reichardt, president and CEO, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.
“The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Vision”
• Tom Warne, president and founder, Tom Warne & Associates
“Meeting the Challenges of Modern and Aging Transportation Systems”
• John Young, COO, American Water “The Sustainability Mandate – Challenges, Opportunities, and Responsibilities Facing the Water and Wastewater Industry”
• Ankush Krishan, managing director, IRCON, Indian Railways
“Delivering Sustainable Rail Infrastructure Around the World”
• Pieter Diedericks, senior project director, Petro-Canada
Edmonton Refinery Conversion Projects
“Managing Mega Projects – an Owner-Operator Perspective”
• Dr. Mukti Das, principal civil engineer, Bechtel Power Corporation
“Use of STAAD.Pro in Bechtel Corporation”
• Aiden Byrne, principal lead program manager, Virtual Earth Business Unit, Microsoft “The New Geospatial Paradigm: A Convergence of Technologies”
• Dr. Richard H.F. Jackson, director, FIATECH “FIATECH, Delivering ISO 15926”
• Alan Edgar, Associate AIA, workgroup program manager, Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate; chair, NBIMS executive committee “Surfing the BIM Transformation”
• Dr. Bracht, Verband Deutscher Ingenieure, professor, FH Clausthal Zellerfeld “The Digital Factory Concept”

Commenting on the upcoming conference, Bentley CMO Ed Mueller said, “This is my first BE Conference, and I’m truly impressed with the incredible enthusiasm and effort that is going into this event. The entire Bentley team is working hard to guarantee a remarkable experience for attendees – one that clearly echoes the company’s commitment to sustaining the built and natural environments by empowering practitioners to efficiently create infrastructure assets that improve quality of life, consume materials and energy less intensively, and are more impervious to catastrophe.”

BE Conference is also about sustaining the infrastructure professions, which face the difficult task of satisfying the growing need for more infrastructure with scarcer engineering resources. At the conference, executives, managers, and practitioners will come together to network and share pragmatic innovations developed by the Bentley solutions communities that will help them meet this critical challenge.

Mueller continued, “In many ways, BE Conference 2008 will be a first-time experience for all who attend. Its approach is fresh and its focus unique – the extensive sharing of best practices using Bentley solutions for specific types of infrastructure projects, along with a host of special events highlighted by our annual BE Awards of Excellence ceremony and celebration. I’m eager to attend this exciting event and look forward to personally meeting with as many of our conference participants as I can.”

The highly focused agenda of BE Conference 2008 will enable attendees to explore innovative ways to increase productivity, improve project quality, and reduce the costs associated with sustaining infrastructure. In short, it will provide them the opportunity to learn how to work smarter as they face the dual challenge posed by burgeoning demand for new and revitalized infrastructure and the need for new entrants into the infrastructure professions.

BE Awards of Excellence
The BE Awards of Excellence are always a high point of the BE Conference. The BE Awards, which are judged by independent panels of industry experts and presented at an evening ceremony and celebration, honor the extraordinary work of Bentley users improving the world’s infrastructure. These projects set benchmarks and showcase the imagination and technical mastery of the organizations that created them.

Exhibit Hall
The BE Conference 2008 exhibit hall will have a new dynamic this year. The exhibit floor will provide a learning and casual networking environment that will enable attendees to meet, collaborate with, and learn from Bentley experts in the “Solutions Areas.” In addition, they will have the opportunity to visit with representatives from companies that help drive, extend, and provide value to Bentley’s software, including HP, Leica, McGraw-Hill, and Microsoft.

BE Conference Attendees
Attendees to BE Conference 2008 will come from AE firms; architecture firms; design-build firms; engineering consultants; structural engineering firms; facility owner-operators; departments of transportation (DOTs) and transportation ministries; rail companies; site engineering firms; communications and utilities firms; national governments and associated contractors; local governments; cadastral authorities; public works agencies; plant engineering/procurement/construction (EPC) contractors; and plant owner-operators.

To register for BE Conference 2008, taking place May 28-30 at the Baltimore Convention Center in Baltimore, Md., visit www.bentley.com/BEconference/registration. For more information about the conference, visit www.bentley.com/BEconference.

About Bentley
Bentley Systems, Incorporated provides software for the lifecycle of the world’s infrastructure. The company’s comprehensive portfolio for the building, plant, civil, and geospatial verticals spans architecture, engineering, construction (AEC) and operations. With revenues now surpassing $400 million annually, and more than 2,400 colleagues globally, Bentley is the leading provider of AEC software to the Engineering News-Record Top Design Firms and major owner-operators, and was named the world’s No. 2 provider of GIS/geospatial software solutions in a Daratech research study.