Building on the potential of digitalisation

CHIEF executive Greg Bentley of Bentley Systems, a software company for the infrastructure sector, feels personally very proud that the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) is using Bentley software - among other vendors' - to create a high-resolution 3D model of the entire country as part of Singapore's Smart Nation initiative.

While the model is still a work-in-progress with no committed deadline, for Mr Bentley, this is living proof of the potential of the role that digitalisation can play in infrastructure design and development.

With digitisation, data and systems can be linked up. Gone are the days when data was recorded remotely on paper. Digitalisation allows other computer programmes to locate, query and use available data for purposes beyond what the data was originally created for, Mr Bentley says.