CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
2 May 2007
Implementation Investments
City of Toronto, Canada, Joins Bentley's Municipal License Subscription Program
Bentley Systems, Incorporated announced that the city of Toronto, Canada , has joined Bentley's Municipal License Subscription (MLS) program. Toronto's new MLS agreement will increase its engineering capabilities and help it better serve the infrastructure needs of its 2.6 million citizens.
Bentley's MLS offers municipalities all the software they need to design and manage all their infrastructure for a fixed annual fee based on population. The program enables them to improve productivity and reduce administrative costs by outfitting their entire mapping and engineering organizations with fully integrated software for GIS and engineering workflows. This leads to improved services and more efficient government.
Commenting on the city's new MLS, Wally Kowalenko, Toronto's director, Survey and Mapping, said, "We can now equip our GIS and engineering teams with the very best in GIS and engineering solutions from Bentley irrespective of the list price of the software. We expect this to make us a more effective and efficient organization in the longer term.
"Moreover, our MLS will also help us standardize our GIS and engineering platforms and this, too, will make us more efficient. We will have fewer types of file formats to manage, and training can be focused on a single, unified set of software solutions. In addition, software acquisition and procurement procedures will be streamlined."
Nearly all of Toronto's departments, including technical services, transportation, police, fire, ambulance, and water, already deploy Bentley solutions. Two sister organizations, Toronto Hydro and Toronto Transit, use Bentley software for electric power distribution and bus and light rail services, respectively, while the city's GIS team uses Bentley's geospatial products to maintain core GIS data. The data includes cadastral information, parcel information, street center lines, addresses, topography, aerial photography, and the enterprise GIS databases used by other departments.
Bentley software solutions currently employed by Toronto include MicroStation, Bentley I/RAS B, InRoads, InRoads Site, InRoads Storm and Sanitary, and InRail. However, this list will grow substantially as a result of the city's new MLS.
Said Kowalenko, "We will immediately begin to deploy more of the InRoads software. We are also exploring the possibility of deploying ProjectWise in conjunction with our enterprise workflow system to help share data and manage our engineering project documentation. In the longer term, we expect to deploy many new Bentley software solutions."
Bentley's MLS program provides municipalities with unlimited access to a comprehensive portfolio of integrated GIS and engineering software for all of their infrastructure, including:
• Public works - roads, bridges, water, sewer, and storm
• Land development
• E-government
• Light rail design
• Community broadband
• Electric and gas network design
• Water and wastewater treatment plant design
• Urban planning
• Cadastre management
• Public safety
• Municipal building design
• Mapping and 3D modeling
Because the program's fees are fixed, Bentley's MLS guarantees predictable software costs and budgeting. In addition, it removes the administrative burden of complex software licenses, shortens procurement cycles, speeds project starts, and ultimately leads to more efficient government.
As Kowalenko continued, "We expect that the MLS program will be a prime agent in improving the services that we deliver to our citizens. Citizens don't see what is behind the delivery of a service, but they certainly know, and appreciate, when it is delivered in an optimal manner.
"Behind improved service delivery are harmonized business processes, harmonized software platforms, standards-based development, integration with enterprise systems, better reporting, and better mobile solutions for field technicians. We are beginning to map out how additional software from Bentley will positively impact all of these elements of our local government operation and look forward to its deployment."
For more information about Bentley's MLS program initiative and software or to contact a Bentley representative, visit http://www.bentley.com/MLS.
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