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The Krasnopolsky Hotel lies in the heart of Amsterdam, with its wealth of canals and narrow streets full of interesting little caf??s, shops and art galleries. The hotel also features the Garden Room, a wonderful central glass covered piazza that dates from the fascinating origins of the hotel under its charismatic founder, Adolph Wilhelm Krasnapolsky, in 1865.

I wonder how many attendees to the Bentley Be Inspired conference, held at the Krasnopolsky towards the end of last year, learned a little bit about the hotel and its technologically advanced beginnings as the first in Amsterdam to be fully lit by electric light bulbs!

Bentley's Be Inspired conference also celebrated the latest technology - in this case the cutting edge technology now being employed by companies worldwide in construction projects, either in their design, their use of technically advanced engineering tools, their management, or their documentation. Bentley users are invited to submit their projects in a wide range of categories and industries; from civil engineering to airport design, process plant development, waterworks, generative design and, of course, general architectural construction.

Bentley is looking, in all cases, for innovative uses of computer technology in each industry, judged by panels of construction professionals from their peers and the press. From the Press perspective, it is a unique opportunity to witness the wide range of topics that Bentley software covers, and also to meet people actually using that technology to good effect on the ground.

JUDGING PANELS
There are plenty of positives all round. Project Managers get the opportunity to present their projects to the world at large, and to meet others engaged in similar projects from whom they may pick up an additional trick or two. Journalists meanwhile have direct contact with senior managers on some prime contracts, and are presented with a wealth of stories and case studies in whatever field they care to study.

It's also a plus for those on the judging panels - half a dozen or so in each category. Panellists are rotated regularly, giving all journalists and expert users of Bentley systems and software the opportunity to critically analyse projects presented by Bentley users.

Once submissions are received by Bentley, a shortlist is put together and details sent to each panellist - a hundred or so over three or four categories - with a couple of months to discuss and evaluate each to determine the finalists, each of whom are invited to attend the Be Inspired conference, where they get to present their projects directly to the panels of judges, and the entire conference.

Following the presentations, a final decision is taken, with the winners in each category being presented with their award at the final dinner. A number of special awards are also made outside of the judging process for companies and individuals who have contributed significantly to the industry. Bentley's software products cover a lot of areas, hence the wide variety of projects that are presented from every corner of the globe.

BENTLEY'S SOFTWARE RELEASES
As I hinted at earlier, Bentley takes full advantage of the presence of a large contingent of International press members at Be Inspired by regaling them with a complete batch of the latest press releases. Whilst it's great being brought up to date in one fell swoop, it does present a problem in processing the wealth of information for readers - especially as Be Inspired also provides plenty of interesting case studies too. There are some however that do deserve special attention, and I hope I can do them justice by outlining them here.

BENTLEY AND SPECWAVE
SpecWave is an information management tool that takes the transparent specification information in technical documents and presents them in a new way, parsing and organising the content at the semantic level of individual and unique text objects, which can then be used as new fundamental data types.

Enhancing information mobility in such a way enables the information in specifications and other structured documents, such as bidding and tenders, construction work packaging and inspection results, to become fully mobile and shareable, with the ability to produce professional quality specification documents with style and ease.

SpecWave also works with eB Insight for specifying compliance and safety documents, and with Bentley Connect enables spec standards to be maintained and tracked across project teams.

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