Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council Wins 2006 BE Award.

Integrated eGovernment Named Top Project in "Best Overall IT Strategy" Category

EXTON, Pa. -- Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council, in Lancashire, England, has won a 2006 BE Award for its Integrated eGovernment project. The award category was "Best Overall IT Strategy."

The BE Awards of Excellence, which are judged by an independent panel of industry experts and presented at an evening ceremony during the annual BE Conference (www.be.org), honor the extraordinary work of Bentley users improving the world's infrastructure. These projects set benchmarks for their industries and showcase the imagination and technical mastery of the organizations that created them.

In 1994, Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council (OMBC) initiated an integrated eGovernment IT strategy. Prior to that, all architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) and geospatial information was either paper- or microfiche-based and stored in disparate databases.

The new strategy would centralize and provide a seamless flow of all AEC and geospatial data related to design, operation, and management. This would eliminate the duplication of data and resources, improve the efficiency of OMBC's operations, reduce costs, and streamline the delivery of services to the public - all of which would allow OMBC to maximize the return on its investment in software, hardware, and user training.

As Peter Taylor, CAD/GIS development officer for OMBC, explained, "Our new strategy provides engineering solutions that allow each department to specialize in its own discipline, yet it also enables information sharing among departments and improves interdepartmental cooperation. The government benefits from improved workflows and efficiencies, and the public benefits from the enhanced delivery of a broader range of services."

OMBC's criteria in selecting a solution to deliver eGovernment included ease of use, simplified administration, instant search and access to data, flexibility in design, and the ability to grow and adapt as requirements change. It was also critical that all 3D AEC models interoperate with the geospatial solution - enabling internal and external developers to visualize their projects in a geospatial context. In addition, the desktop design and data capture tools had to interoperate with other database systems.

Said Peter Taylor, "After stringent testing and evaluation, we determined that Bentley provides the most comprehensive and best-integrated portfolio of AEC and geospatial solutions. The software presents a single and familiar interface to all building, civil, plant, and geospatial disciplines, and allows data and designs created by one discipline to be used by others and form the basis of common workflows."

Use of the Bentley AEC and geospatial solutions in OMBC's eGovernment strategy has expanded over time to include a growing diversity of applications. Currently, OMBC is using 239 Bentley product licenses to support every aspect of design or data management in every department, including environmental services, social services, education, regeneration, housing management, and corporate security. Examples of specific data being recorded and managed include CCT camera locations, sewer networks, employee home locations, public rights of way, cycle networks, contaminated land sites, waste disposal sites, refuse collection routes, highway markings, and building design, construction and management.

For more information on OMBC's winning project and all of the other 2006 BE Award projects, visit www.be.org/awards. For more information on the Bentley products used in this project, visit www.bentley.com/geospatial.

About Oldham and the Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council

Located in the northwest of England, between the city of Manchester and the Yorkshire Moors, Oldham was one of the world's leading cotton spinning towns in the 19th and 20th centuries. Today, Oldham is a thriving cultural and business center that's home to more than 210,000 people.

Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council provides a wide range of services for the people of the borough and manages an annual budget totaling about u500 million. For more information, visit www.oldham.gov.uk

About the BE Conference

The BE Conference, which consistently scores a 99 percent attendee satisfaction rating, is a once-a-year learning opportunity for Bentley user organizations offering professional training, technology updates, keynotes, and best practice sharing. At these sessions, attendees better themselves, better their organizations, and better the ways they can improve the world's infrastructure.

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 2005 revenues of $336 million and more than 2000 colleagues around the world, Bentley is the leading provider of AEC software to the Engineering News-Record Top 500 Design Firms and major owner-operators and was named the world's No. 2 provider of GIS/geospatial software solutions in a recent Daratech research study.

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