Bentley’s Previews OpenGround at Year in Infrastructure Conference

OpenGround - The future of geotechnical software at Bentley?

Bentley has been on the radar for geotechnical professionals lately with their recent acquisition of Keynetix, the makers of HoleBASE SI. All of us have been eagerly awaiting the next moves in how the company will manage the integration of the two most ubiquitous geotechnical data management programs around, gINT and HBSI.

At their recent Year in Infrastructure 2019 Conference, Bentley provided a sneak peek into what’s coming. It’s called OpenGround. There’s still not much information out yet, but I hear that there will be more unveiled about it in the new year. Until then…

Bentley is launching OpenGround, our collection of geotechnical information management applications that provide a comprehensive solution for collecting, managing, visualizing, analyzing, and accessing sub-surface data. Here’s what’s new in OpenGround.

According to the OpenGround intro page out there, it revolves around three components. One, it utilizes Bentley’s cloud platform to manage data…I know Keynetix had been working on a cloud platform as well, so I’m not sure how much of it is from the Keynetix work, and how much from Bentley.

Second, there seems to be a strong focus on interoperability with some of the other geotechnical software programs that Bentley has acquired in recent years, namely PLAXIS and SoilVision. With the increasing use of 3D analyses, the ability to quickly and easily go from borehole log to 3D subsurface model, to analytical software model will be an incredibly powerful feature.

Last but certainly not least, there is the data collection component. Bentley has announced its gINT Collector app for Android tablets to electronically log boreholes in the field. I’m sure more info will be coming out here, but in the meantime, there are a few FAQs and some short videos on Bentley’s wiki site. I saw a demo of this App at a recent conference, and my initial impressions of the app are good.

[Editor] Both Bentley and Keynetix are GeoPrac.net sponsors. [/Editor]