News Roundup
Bentley Systems has announced that nominations are now open for the 2025 Going Digital Awards. This renowned global programme recognises the very best digital advancements in infrastructure delivery and performance. Independent jurors– consisting of thought leaders and experts in their field – select the winners from among the world’s most extraordinary infrastructure projects.
Celebrating over 20 years, the awards have showcased more than 5,250 of the world’s most outstanding infrastructure projects. This global event is open to all Bentley software users and nominations are encouraged across a range of categories. The deadline for nominations is 31 March 2025.
bentley.com/yii/awards
Building on its collaborative history, NBS users will now be given deeper guidance on BSI-accredited products, in a move that will further expand the platform’s compliance offering following the new partnership. Specifiers and construction professionals will also gain further assistance in the decisionmaking process, with NBS providing consistent third-party assessment details at the point of specification. This will also deliver clearer, unambiguous product information to the fingertips of architects and designers working on construction projects.
A new alliance of engineering and manufacturing firms has been launched in Scotland, to avert the looming ‘economic disaster’ and grasp an ‘Industrial Revolution sized opportunity’ worth hundreds of billions of pounds to the Scottish economy. Business leaders, educators and government representatives have been told that more than £230bn was at stake over the next decade.
The Enginuity Alliance, launched at a high-level meeting at the University of Strathclyde, brought together interested parties from across the sector, will share best practice, generate discussion and produce hugely enhanced leverage to influence policy makers on both sides of the borders.
Enginuity chair, Sir Jim McDonald, GBE, told the gathering that it was imperative that Scottish businesses join the alliance.
“This will have real world impact. The consequences of getting it right will improvement in growth, productivity and prosperity for all. The penny is dropping that the lack of available skills in the workforce will be one of the biggest drags on the UK economy.”
International engineering federation FIDIC (the International Federation of Consulting Engineers) has renewed and expanded a major agreement with the Inter-American Development Bank that will now see the international funding organisation adopt the use of nine FIDIC standard contracts for the next five years. The Inter-American Development Bank is the main source of development financing for Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Association for Geographic Information has launched a new project exploring the opportunities and challenges for the sector over the next five years. Referencing previous foresight projects, the current work is starting with a wide-reaching survey aimed at identifying the biggest themes, influences and developments, that will impact geospatial to 2030.
Additional input will be sourced from stakeholders working in government, commerce, academia, and research, in the form of one-to-one interviews and the results of these will be published in an independent report later in the year. This report will be formally launched at a dedicated event at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) on 13 November 2025.
The AGI Foresight Project 2030 survey is currently live on the AGI website. Open to any interested individual or organisation, opinions are being sought on the themes raised in the previous foresight report and the opportunities for the geographic information industry over the next five years.
Thoughts are also being sought on how the sector can maximise these opportunities whilst also identifying and responding to challenges.
www.agi.org.uk/foresight-report