Winner

As a general engineering consultant for this 20-mile light rail system linking downtown Phoenix, Tempe, and Mesa, Arizona, Parsons Brinckerhoff led a diverse group of seven primary design sub-consultants and 56 sub-sub-consultants to deliver the project in six years. The civil portion included contracts for five line sections, seven park-and-rides for 26 stations, one 1,500-foot-long bridge, and a maintenance and storage facility.

The design team was comprised of more than 250 local and national experts experienced in the use of Bentley products. When the client required the job to be completed using Autodesk products, however, Parsons Brinckerhoff proposed using MicroStation but delivering the finished design in DWG file format. The $1.4 billion light rail system was in full service by December 2008.

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The public transport company of Amsterdam in the Netherlands transports about 1 million people every day by tram, bus, metro, and ferries on Amsterdam’s notoriously steep and curvy streets with slopes of 8 percent or more. The goal of this $15 million project was to redesign one of the busiest streets in Amsterdam to optimize the tramway rail layout, especially over bridges.

To meet tram manufacturer contract requirements, steep grades had to be reduced. Bentley Rail Track provided the rail control department with a vertical 3D overview, which allowed designers to optimize the steep tracks. Bentley’s 3D design tools have enabled GVB to design tracks about six times faster than before.

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Before transitioning from MXRAIL to Bentley Rail Track, Mott MacDonald identified two pilot projects for trial implementation. The first was an ongoing project moving from outline design using MXRAIL to detailed design using Bentley Rail Track. The transition improved the interface between design and drawing tools, enabling designers to react to project change more efficiently.

The second project was a series of labor-intensive feasibility studies to identify the optimum location of passing loops on an ore line in South Africa, and the use of templates to define track form and earthwork dimensions proved invaluable. With two successful projects completed, the firm committed to a program of migration, beginning with the central design office and then rolling it out to regional offices. Project durations have been reduced by up to 20 percent as a result.

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The Malmo train station in Sweden handles 52,000 passengers per day. The goal of this $161 million project was to rebuild the central station to accommodate the new railroad tunnel under the city while maintaining normal train traffic during the rebuilding. Through a combination of Bentley products and its own developed applications, the technical staff was able to work on a common platform.

Using a process called multidisciplinary coordinate-based design, Vectura Consulting united the project team across disciplines. Designers and engineers used Bentley Rail Track to place physical objects in a coordinate-based environment, with changes updated in real time to provide all team members access to the latest version of the design. Bentley products contributed to a savings of 20 to 25 percent in design time.

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