The software features comprehensive mechanical and energy performance design capabilities that facilitate compliance with industry standards using automated ASHRAE 90.1 comparisons. This further reduces project risk and results in time savings by expediting the certification process.

Dru Crawley, Bentley director, Building Energy Performance Products, said, “AECOsim Energy Simulator is a unique application for the immersive design, simulation, and analysis of building mechanical systems, environmental conditions, and energy performance. It incorporates the emerging industry standard EnergyPlus simulation engine from the U.S. Department of Energy, allows access to all HVAC inputs and outputs, and matches the actual building conditions to the building simulation. This capability will greatly improve project quality with accurate simulations that closely match the actual building performance. In addition, users will be able to reduce risk and cost with the automatic creation of all four required ASHRAE 90.1 baseline models.”

AECOsim Compliance Manager

AECOsim Compliance Manager is a new project management and collaboration SaaS that automates the United States Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED certification process. It empowers project teams to achieve LEED certification more accurately, more quickly, and at a lower cost.

Its centralized online LEED data repository and full system of record for all project team activity, document storage, and electronic submissions provide sophisticated reporting capabilities, historical analysis, and access to past projects for best practices information. In addition, AECOsim Compliance Manager’s step-by-step task and LEED credit management, checklists, wizards and calculators, automated LEED credits, teamwork tools, and more all help projects achieve maximum LEED ranking.

“LEED certification is a highly complex and technically rigorous process,” said Huw Roberts, Bentley global marketing director, “and tackling it with generic software modified for LEED certification makes the challenge all the more difficult. Project teams find themselves struggling to manage an overwhelming amount of data, and often must deal with data inconsistencies that slow progress and waste dollars.”

He continued, “In comparison, our new AECOsim Compliance Manager has been developed for the specific purpose of streamlining LEED certification. It extends these capabilities to users of design tools from Bentley as well as others, such as AutoCAD, Revit, and Archicad. It enables experienced and new LEED certification teams alike to readily manage the mountain of data LEED certification requires through the use of automated workflows that lead to maximized LEED rankings.”

Designed by expert LEED consultants specifically for LEED project teams, AECOsim Compliance Manager is the first service of its kind to be fully integrated with USGBC’s LEED Online. It provides communication, collaboration, and task accountability across the entire certification project team, and results in increased productivity and higher-quality work.

Users can access AECOsim Compliance Manager from the office, construction site, or just about any location using a mobile device, such as an iPhone or iPad, and an Internet connection. Since it’s SaaS, the software updates automatically, eliminating costly programming and IT installations, and ensuring project quality. Moreover, its cloud-hosting environment provides project teams with backup and redundancy to reduce risk.

At the heart of AECOsim Compliance Manager is a relational database that maintains data consistency and creates opportunities for analysis. This enables users to better control quality and reduces time spent manually reviewing LEED documents created by other team members.

The software’s integration with Google Maps to consider project location enables automatic distance calculations that can be used to more efficiently meet the requirements of several LEED credits. It also provides distance calculations for local materials sourcing to save time and minimize errors.

For additional information about AECOsim Building Designer, AECOsim Energy Simulator, and AECOsim Compliance Manager, visit www.bentley.com/AECOsim.

About Be Together: The Bentley User Conference

Be Together: The Bentley User Conference, taking place this week at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, enables the architects, engineers, constructors, geospatial and operations professionals, and CAD managers who regularly exchange ideas virtually on the Be Communities professional networking site to connect, communicate, and learn from each other in person. In addition, guided by Bentley product experts, attendees acquire knowledge crucial to the adoption of information-modeling best practices as they earn Bentley Institute Learning Units to maximize return on time invested in professional development. The conference hosts nine tracks: Roads and Bridges, Structural, Water, Geospatial, Utilities and Communications, Building, Plant, AssetWise, and MicroStation and ProjectWise. For additional information about the conference, visit www.bentley.com/BeTogether.

About Bentley Systems, Incorporated

Bentley is the global leader dedicated to providing architects, engineers, geospatial professionals, constructors, and owner-operators with comprehensive software solutions for sustaining infrastructure. Bentley’s mission is to empower its users to leverage information modeling through integrated projects for high-performing intelligent infrastructure. Its solutions encompass the MicroStation platform for infrastructure design and modeling, the ProjectWise platform for infrastructure project team collaboration and work sharing, and the AssetWise platform for infrastructure asset operations – all supporting a broad portfolio of interoperable applications and complemented by worldwide professional services. Founded in 1984, Bentley has grown to nearly 3,000 colleagues in more than 45 countries and $500 million in annual revenues. Since 2001, the company has invested more than $1 billion in research, development, and acquisitions.

Additional information about Bentley is available at www.bentley.com and in Bentley’s annual report. For Bentley news as it happens, subscribe to an RSS feed of Bentley press releases and news alerts. To view a searchable collection of innovative infrastructure projects from the annual Be Inspired Awards , access Bentley’s Year in Infrastructure publications. To access a professional networking site that enables members of the infrastructure community to connect, communicate, and learn from each other, visit Be Communities .