Bentley Systems Inc., a provider of comprehensive software solutions for infrastructure, announced the release of Bentley Pipe Renewal Planner, a new decision support tool that provides water utility owner-operators with a quantifiable and reproducible best practice for optimizing the replacement and rehabilitation of distribution network pipes. Pipe Renewal Planner ranks the worst-performing pipes in the network, helping owner-operators more effectively prioritize network upgrades. Benefits include improved asset planning, increased distribution capacity and maximum returns on capital expenditures. Pipe Renewal Planner will be included in the new release of Bentley’s WaterGEMS and available as an add-on module for the new release of Bentley’s WaterCAD.
The new module helps engineers identify pipes that should be considered for renewal by ranking the worst-performing pipes based on their year of installation, materials of construction, pipe break history and hydraulic performance under various constraints. The latter is accurately assessed using pipe break, fire flow capacity and criticality analyses. Through this ranking process, Pipe Renewal Planner helps ensure long-term system reliability by decreasing pipe breaks, leakage, lost revenues and outages.
“With Pipe Renewal Planner, engineers can integrate pipe scoring and ranking as part of the asset management process,” said Thomas Walski, Bently product manager for water distribution products. “This means they can benefit from an accounting of hydraulic performance and GIS historical data in their main renewal planning decisions.”
The interface of WaterCAD and WaterGEMS allows users to visualize the results from Pipe Renewal Planner. The visualization can be either a thematic map of the network, for clear graphical interpretation, or a detailed tabular report conveniently provided directly in the Pipe Renewal Planner dialog.
The Pipe Renewal Planner feature also can be used as part of Bentley’s water loss software solution, reinforcing the infrastructure management portion of a proactive water loss strategy (as described in the International Water Assn.’s four best practices for reducing water loss).
Source: Bentley Systems Inc.
