Overview for Cambashi Limited's GeoEngineering White Paper

Overview:

Geoengineering defines a market involving the planning, construction and operation of large-scale infrastructure projects. Projects are commissioned by a wide variety of organisations, from utility and telecommunications companies to national and local government. They involve owner-operators and a variety of contractors and service providers.

Companies who have been providing general CAD and GIS technologies to these sectors are now beginning to focus their efforts on the specific requirements of this new market. In the past, general-purpose applications have been used, rather than ones that have been specifically designed to meet the requirements of major infrastructure projects. GIS tools cover a range of applications from cadastral mapping to map production. CAD systems can be used to design anything from a garden shed to an airport. These large-scale Geoengineering projects need appropriate applications. For example, the digital terrain modeller must be able to handle long linear networks as well as the cut and fill operations required for designing an office block. New applications, such as Internet-enabled co-operative design and engineering, are essential to maintain necessary productivity imp rovements.

The Geoengineering market is being driven by a number of factors. Around the world, utility and telecommunications companies have either been de-regulated or are in the process of deregulation. Large-scale projects, which have been predominately funded by the public sector, are now funded by joint public / private initiatives. The number of stake-holders in these projects is increasing and they all expect to see a return on their investment.

Expenditure on software and related services for this market is expected to exceed US$1.2bn in 2000, up from US$1.07bn in 1999. Two key factors in the market development are availability of new technologies, such as web-based collaborative engineering and design, and operational integration with mainstream enterprise applications.

New technologies such as WAP, and new applications of existing technologies, such as GPS and the Internet, are being used in the search for operational efficiency. New standards, such as aecXML, will facilitate access to and the sharing of data. Project-based web sites, which have long been the dream of vendors (via technology) rather than users (working in the real world), are now providing useful capabilities. They will increasingly be adopted and display substantial savings in project timescales and costs.

The top five leading application providers in this market started in these other domains. Bentley has evolved from a CAD background to being the major vendor in this new market, following their acquisition of products such as InRoads and InRail from one of the other major Geoengineering vendors, Intergraph. Also with its roots in CAD, Autodesk has a major presence in the Geoengineering market. From the GIS domain, Smallworld has transformed itself from a GIS start-up to a company that focuses on the telecommunication and utility market sectors, which together make up one third of the Geoengineering market. ESRI, the leader in tr aditional GIS and mapping, is also active in this new market, primarily through its wide range of partners.

One key to success is the rate at which application vendors are integrating the Geoengineering applications with other project management systems, e-mail systems such as Microsoft Outlook, and mainstream operational applications such as ERP, SCM and CRM. Announcements already made by the leading vendors indicate that this is happening as fast as, if not faster than, the market can react.

The complete GeoEngineering White Paper is available for sale on http://www.cambashi.com