CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

21 January 2009

Implementation Investments

Gautrain Rapid Rail Link Meets Demanding Requirements With Bentley’s ProjectWise Collaboration System

The Gautrain Rapid Rail Link in South Africa won a 2008 Be Award of Excellence in the “Innovation in Rail and Transit” category. The award was presented for the new rapid railway that links Pretoria, in Tshwane, with Johannesburg and also links Sandton with the ORTIA International Airport in South Africa. The project is featured in the new publication “The Year in Infrastructure 2008,” available online from Bentley Systems at http://www.bentley.com/YearInInfrastructure2008 The Gautrain Rapid Rail Link’s primary goals are to enhance and support economic growth and generate employment in the region. Trains on the new railway will travel at 100 miles per hour along approximately 50 miles of rail route. Ultimately, with upgrades, the trains will be able to transport more than 60,000 passengers per hour and, thereby, reduce the number of cars on parallel roads by 20 percent. The project offers a cost-effective, efficient, environmentally friendly, and safe answer to some of the worst transport and road traffic problems in the most densely developed area in Gauteng province – the economic engine of Southern Africa. Through its use of Bentley’s ProjectWise collaboration system, the Gautrain team is effectively managing this complex design-build-operate, maintain-transfer public-private partnership project to successful completion.

The project involves a team of 350 specialists and experts working locally at various offices as well as a number of international experts. ProjectWise allows the entire Gautrain team to find, control, transmit, collaboratively review, and report project data, and enables workflows that ensure quality control as part of the ISO quality system. Streamlining this process through its use of ProjectWise gave Gautrain the means to keep the project on track.

Johan Venter, project and administration manager at Gautrain Rapid Rail Link, said, “An army marches on its belly. A concession contract marches on its integrated documentation and its ability to manage and find documents.”

He continued, “In this case, the full tender and procurement process and all initial designs and collaboration were done with ProjectWise. Without a collaboration system such as this, we would not have been able to complete the project in the required time frame. It is an essential component of the project management and control system for a large project.”

For additional information about the ProjectWise collaboration system, visit http://www.bentley.com/projectwise.

For information about how to enter projects for consideration in the 2009 Be Awards of Excellence competition, visit http://www.bentley.com/BeAwards.

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