Today Bentley Systems, Incorporated held an online press briefing to announce their new High Performance Building products – a set of building software oriented to meet ‘green’ building industry performance.  Noah Eckhouse, Jim Barr and Huw W. Roberts from Bentley were all on hand to explain the new lineup.

The company has positioned itself under the sustainable infrastructure banner, and with a wide and varied product line it finds itself involved in water management, utilities, bridges and roads, plant operations and structural engineering.

However, today’s announcements were focused on building performance, specifically the high amount of energy that buildings use and the need to design, build and operate buildings more efficently.

It was pointed out that U.S. buildings account for 39% of all energy use in that country, 39% of CO2 emissions, 65% of waste and 71% of all electricity use.

Clearly better designed and operated buildings have room for improvement and that was the message being delivered today.

“Many so called green buildings today are not actually delivering green benefits,” said Jim Barr. He was alluding to the fact that many people are making claims, but few are delivering on the promise of better design toward easing the high level of energy use and demand from buildings. “We need to quantify the benefits and identify them,” he further pointed out.

To meet this need Bentley is releasing several products to the market. These include,

• Hevacomp Simulater V8i and Hevacomp Mechanical V8i – designed to follow DOE standard Energy PLUS requirements
• Bentley Tas V8i Simulator – designed for use in complex building design environments

Collectively these products enable models, data and drawings to be integrated together through interoperable standards into a framework enabling design, analysis and simulation to be conducted. The workflow bringing these elements together offers the opportunity to achieve higher levels of performance – thus efficiency – and that is the story of the High Performance Building Series.

The collection of software and its functionality is impressive. Images and explanations described shadow analysis, visualisation, environmental climate parameters, changes in temperature through space and time.

Together these software provide users with an opportunity to see how building designs will perform, and to adjust them to meet optimal needs. Hevacomp and Tas are used by 68% of UK building service consultants. And the message today also pointed out that an invasion of European expertise and knowledge is being readied and aimed at the U.S. and Canadian markets.

While UK professionals have been aware of and required to consider green building performance and standards, a similar concept is yet to arrive in North America. It might very well be that these products begin the capacity building leading to wider adoption of high performace building software in North America due to their installed base, ease of use and increased functionality leading to results.

Time will tell, but for now, designers, builders and operators of buildings in North America will want to check out the details online.

www.bentley.com/EPS