New Bentley Education Program gives students and educators free access to learning licenses and self-paced learning
Bentley Systems has launched a new education program designed to encourage the development of future infrastructure professionals for careers in engineering, design, and architecture.
The Bentley Education program will help student and educators build and enhance their digital design skills by giving ‘full and free’ access to more than 40 Bentley applications including ContextCapture, MicroStation, OpenRoads Designer, STAAD.Pro, and Synchro. The program will also offer self-paced learning through the new Bentley Education portal.
Other resources include insights from leading AEC professionals, sharing what the industry has to offer students and what skills are in high demand; the latest news and emerging trends in architecture, engineering, and construction; and firsthand perspective of current engineering students, mentors, and women in infrastructure engineering.
The Bentley Education program is open to students and educators at community colleges, technical institutes, polytechnics, universities, secondary schools, and homeschooled students.
It is initially available in the United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore, Ireland, and Lithuania, with plans to expand to the United States, Canada, Mexico, Latin America, and India by mid-summer.
Future Infrastructure Star Challenge 2021
The Bentley Education portal also serves as a gateway for individual students or teams of two to submit their innovative concepts for Bentley’s Future Infrastructure Star Challenge 2021.
Students advancing in the Challenge, based on their ideas that improve quality of life, will work on modelling, simulation, and visualisation to develop a design model. The winner of the Future Infrastructure Star Challenge will be announced during the Going Digital Awards at the Year in Infrastructure 2021 Conference.
The inaugural Future Infrastructure Star Challenge is divided into Stage 1 (Conceptualisation), and Stage 2 (Design and Visualisation).
In Stage 1 (Conceptualisation), students are invited to submit their ideas for “a next big infrastructure project” in any of the following categories: road and rail, building and facilities, water and wastewater, cities and mapping, and power generation.
While conceptualising their idea, students should focus on an environmental challenge that affects or is affected by infrastructure development, consider applying the Internet of Things, and emphasize the project’s contribution to the world’s health and welfare.
The top 20 judged projects from Stage 1 (Conceptualisation) will each win USD 500, with the top 10 projects moving on to Stage 2 (Design and Visualisation). Here, each such entry may take advantage of opportunities to work with infrastructure professionals, and/or to attend masterclasses with Bentley experts, to bring their ideas to life using Bentley applications.
In addition to being announced and introduced at the Year in Infrastructure 2021 Conference, the winner of the Future Infrastructure Star Challenge 2010 will receive a cash prize of USD 5,000 and recognition in Bentley’s 2021 Infrastructure Yearbook.
Vinayak Trivedi, vice president of Bentley Education, said, “We want to make the Bentley Education portal the place where students can go to learn about and become inspired to make infrastructure engineering their career choice. The goal of the program is to help students who are passionate about infrastructure to get a jump-start on a fulfilling career. The Future Infrastructure Star Challenge 2021 provides an opportunity for them to be creative and innovative in project designs for improving the quality of life and positively changing the world.”
