Companies of all sizes can collaborate and manage infrastructure engineering projects with new easy access portal.

Bentley Systems has sponsored this post.

There’s a reason—well, three reasons, really—that ENR Top 100 companies rely on Bentley Systems enterprise collaboration solution ProjectWise Design Integration for collaboration: secure access to data when they need it for reviewing or sharing, the ability to view multiple software formats and being able to track progress throughout a project’s lifecycle, ultimately enabling complete design integration and work-in-progress coordination for large complex projects.

Now, with the ProjectWise 365 online version, small-to-medium architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) companies can also reap the benefits of Bentley’s collaboration tools at a fraction of the cost of the enterprise version.

ProjectWise 365 is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that enables teams to easily collaborate, conduct design reviews, track progress on engineering projects, share data internally or with others, such as owners, clients, suppliers, and stakeholders.

ProjectWise 365 services were first introduced at Bentley’s Year in Infrastructure (YII) event in 2017 as part of the ProjectWise CONNECT Edition. In 2019, it became available as a stand-alone service when Bentley announced ProjectWise 365 cloud services at the last YII event in Singapore. Bentley introduced a new portal for ProjectWise 365 in October 2020.

During the pandemic, Bentley offered free subscriptions of ProjectWise 365 to help infrastructure teams who were working remotely stay connected and remain productive.

Key Features Make the Case for ProjectWise 365

To learn about the latest iteration of the service, we spoke with Robert DeFeo, Bentley Systems’ Director of Product Strategy, Project Delivery and product manager for ProjectWise 365. DeFeo has been with Bentley Systems for 12 years and in the AEC industry for 35+ years.

DeFeo said ProjectWise 365 aims to help small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) collaborate easily through a browser so they can deliver projects faster. As he explained it, project teams can work independently on internal projects or coordinate on external projects with owners and clients. The primary benefits are design collaboration, support for multiple file formats, real-time design reviews, streamlined issues resolution and collaboration with external owners and clients.

As 3D modeling is the core of any engineering project, it is crucial that design teams have the ability to review and track the status of their models and share progress with owners and clients to get engineering projects completed on time and on budget.

With ProjectWise 365 design reviews are included in the price, unlike some of the competition, and since everyone is working in the cloud everything appears in real-time.

“The review of 3D models and the status of a model is extremely important to design quality and project productivity,” said DeFeo. “ProjectWise 365 allows not only designers, but any project team member to participate in a real-time 3D design review.”

Collaborating on a project has never been easier. With ProjectWise 365 users can initiate a design review with others to quickly identify and evaluate issues on a project. With the real-time capability all changes to a model are automatically updated and users can view comments and action items such as tasks and assignments. ProjectWise 365 is praised for its design task capabilities. ProjectWise tracks who did what and when, and saves past design reviews in case they need to be revisited.

From Hydro-Utilities Consulting Engineers (Pvt) Ltd. “We needed to ensure our engineers could quickly and easily collaborate with the larger project team, whether working on-site, from home or any other location. We believe ProjectWise 365 will enable this by providing a fully web-based solution for internal and external project stakeholders to access real-time project documents, provide feedback on designs and manage outstanding tasks, to maximize our productivity and competitive efficiencies.”—Thami Mpala, Director

ProjectWise 365 is also equipped with a number of tools for tracking issues such as those defined from a design review, deliverable package or an ad hoc issue. A central dashboard lets you visualize issues assigned to you for action.

Knowing the status a project is priceless. With ProjectWise 365, project managers can see project status and issues that still need addressing. Teams can see priority tasks that need attention and also see what others are working on – which means they don’t have to interrupt their colleagues, allowing them to stay focused on designing and being productive.

From BLA, Inc. “The present work-from-home conditions and coordination with multiple parties highlights how critical it is to our business and our role as prime consultant on projects that our project teams always stay connected and productive. ProjectWise 365 cloud services enable us to rapidly deploy a common BIM collaboration environment that avoids the data silos, coordination delays and the other limitations we’ve experienced while using network drives, file-sharing services and email.”—Gregory J. Ellwanger, P.E., Project Engineer

The ability to create deliverables and track them is another key feature and perk of the project collaboration portal. For instance, users can see if the deliverables have been acknowledged by the recipient and whether they have been addressed, whether it is a transmittal or an RFI. General correspondence is registered and captured within the project with a full audit trail of who was sent what and on what date, and you can track whether it has been addressed in a timely manner. Users can view all this information on the dashboard to see any delays, what caused the delay and who is responsible, in order to help make more informed decisions on a project and pass that information on for additional projects so it is avoided in the future.

Sharing information externally is also critical for design teams. With ProjectWise 365 users don’t have to worry about protecting intellectual property as it runs securely on Microsoft Azure cloud services.

Not only is ProjectWise 365 a secure service, but what also makes it appealing is that it aims to make file sharing simple. In that respect, there is a cloud storage area specifically for sharing. There is also a “work area connections” feature for companies using with ProjectWise Design Integration.

Companies using ProjectWise Design Integration can give team members, clients, and consultants easier access to their data and documents via ProjectWise 365. This web access is secure and can be controlled allowing accessibility to only the project information they need to collaborate effectively. 

In terms of simplicity, ProjectWise 365 also enables companies to work with different file formats.

Bentley certainly recognizes that AEC industry firms use many different file formats. When it comes to integration, in addition to sharing Bentley DGN files, ProjectWise 365 also supports AutoCAD’s DWG files and Revit files, as well as IFC and other formats. Engineers and designers can continue to work in their familiar desktop applications, while coordinating their data with the project team via the cloud. This coordination is effortless and without disruption to their workflows.

As other file types, such as Revit and IFC are popular in the AEC space, ProjectWise 365 has the capability to combine all those file types for a design review in a single iModel.

How Does ProjectWise 365 Stack Up to the Competition?

ProjectWise 365 is focused on design-work-in-progress and collaboration throughout an engineering project, where other industry project collaboration applications are geared for construction workflows.

Unlike other brands, design review and PDF markup tools are included in the cost of ProjectWise 365.

In addition to PDF markups, users have access to Microsoft 365 document editing and can collaborate on projects right from Microsoft Teams.

Get Started and Become a ProjectWise 365 Pro in Just One Day

Since ProjectWise 365 is accessed through a web portal, companies do not have to worry about expensive IT to get it up and running—users simply log-in.

As far as learning the software goes, the interface provides users with the steps necessary to set up a project. Once a project is set up, all the features on the task bar have a description and a short video. In addition, there is a resource center that offers additional resources to learn more about the available features, including more videos and an announcements section so that when a new feature is released users will be notified.

Plus, there is an “ideas” section that provides a way to submit feature requests directly to Bentley’s product management team.

To learn more about ProjectWise 365, visit the Bentley website and get a free trial.