Industry Summary Articles

Bentley Systems, Incorporated announced the acquisition of leading provider of software for traffic sign design and manufacturing, SignCAD Systems, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. SignCAD provides sign design solutions to 43 state departments of transportation (DOTs) in the U.S., as well as many cities, counties, engineering firms, and manufacturers. SignCAD’s sign design capabilities complement Bentley’s OpenRoads civil design software offerings for roadway projects. 

SignCAD’s offerings for traffic signs include sign design, sign manufacturing, and asset management software solutions. The acquisition builds upon Bentley’s ability to provide the most comprehensive set of solutions for design and construction of transportation assets. It will also allow Bentley to better serve roadway asset owners for the purposes of maintaining safer construction work zones while sustaining roadway performance criteria for the public.

Dustin Parkman, vice president, civil infrastructure design engineering for Bentley Systems, said, “For the past five years, we have been working diligently on increasing the level of detail that can be modeled and simulated within the OpenRoads environment. With the addition of SignCAD, 3D modeling of signs within the context of our roadway designs allows us to provide a higher fidelity representation of roadway assets, yielding benefits beyond design and construction workflows. 

“In this new era of autonomous vehicles, the digital representation of roadway networks is quickly becoming just as vital as the physical roadway,” Parkman continued. “Faded or obscured signs and unusual intersections are commonplace throughout most of world’s roadway networks, presenting new and interesting challenges for roadway owners—challenges that often cannot be met by physical upgrades alone. To bridge that gap, we need a digital representation of roadway assets often referred to as a ‘digital twin.’ Roadway signs provide important information about the road network that can be leveraged far beyond conventional line of site machine learning methods, to provide additional depth of information and calibration. With the addition of SignCAD, Bentley’s digital twin for roadway assets will provide this valuable data to roadway asset owners.”

Judd Roby, president of SignCAD, said, “We are extremely excited about adding SignCAD into the realm of 3D modeling with OpenRoads. This acquisition supports our goals of continuing to meet the transportation owner/operators’ needs across the design, build, operate, and maintain lifecycle.”

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