KUALA LUMPUR: For the second year running, Lebuhraya Borneo Utara Sdn Bhd (LBU) was named winner at Bentley’s ‘Year In Infrastructure 2019’ Awards, this time winning in the Road and Rail Asset Performance category for its use of technology in the Pan Borneo Highway Sarawak project.
The prestigious international award win was announced at a grand ceremony held in Singapore Thursday, following a decision by a panel of judges from the infrastructure industry and foreign media, as LBU, which is also the Project Delivery Partner Pan Borneo Highway Sarawak, was judged winner against two other finalists, the Main Roads Western Australia and Transport for London.
Overall, this year’s Bentley awards competition saw 571 projects being nominated, representing project locations in over 60 countries and over 400 cities.
Bentley Systems is the leading global provider of software and digital twin cloud services for advancing the design, construction and operations of infrastructure.
LBU communications head Nor Zalida Ahmad, in a statement yesterday announcing LBU as winner in the Road and Rail Asset Performance category, said Bentley found that LBU is using contextual information and a digital twins approach for the Pan Borneo Highway Sarawak as the basis for operational decisions.
She said in doing so, LBU is also playing a significant role in driving economic opportunities in the area by placing the same level of importance to both societal and financial benefits as well as encouraging the next generation of engineers and designers to use advancements in digital technology for infrastructure.
“The judges were impressed to hear about the wider impacts that Pan Borneo Highway has on the local community. This includes local capacity-building, such as developing more Sarawak engineers to use Building Information Modelling (BIM) in construction.
“For the public, using BIM across the asset lifecycle of the Pan Borneo Highway Sarawak readies this transportation backbone for more digital applications to be used, such as Internet of Things (IOT) and big data, to better manage future traffic flows, and contribute to a balanced economic development for Sarawak,” she said.
This year’s ‘Year In Infrastructure’ award recognition is for the efficient use of technology to prepare Pan Borneo Highway Sarawak for the operations and maintenance phase using Bentley’s AssetWise software solution.
Nor Zalida also said Thursday’s win follows on from LBU being named winner of the ‘Year In Infrastructure 2018’ Award in the Roads and Highways category, presented in London this time last year.
She added that then, LBU’s submission was focused on the impact of using ProjectWise to create a Connected Data Environment (CDE) to support the use of BIM, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and other business processes as part of the design, planning and construction phases.
“In further describing the project, Bentley highlighted that Pan Borneo Highway Sarawak is a four-lane dual carriageway running through existing communities and protected reserves in Sarawak.
“The project serves as a benchmark for expanding the use of BIM (Building Information Modelling) methodology to develop a complete asset management system for roads and highways.
“By using Bentley technology to integrate construction data with asset performance, when completed, the management system is expected to optimise costs, operations and maintenance,” she said. – Bernama
