The trend towards reclaiming land and building large structures on them, which is becoming a widespread practice in the GCC, makes greater integration between geotechnical and structural data analysis imperative, according to a leading expert.

“Building large structures on reclaimed land presents many geotechnical challenges,” Raoul Karp, vice-president, structural and BrIM products at US-based Bentley Systems, tells MEED on the sidelines of the ongoing Year in Infrastructure conference being organised by the firm.

He says combining geotechnical information such as soil properties, behaviour, groundwater flow and structural engineering data is critical, especially when a decision to expand a structure has to be made down the line.

“The reality is that you are building a structure on top of the soil… events like seismic activities will impact both the soil and the built structure, so there is a need to bridge these two disciplines that have been treated separately for a long time,” Karp explains.

The availability of geotechnical information is also crucial for infrastructure projects like roads, which usually need to be expanded or retrofitted to meet increasing traffic or load requirements - especially in congested environments or areas with a lot of sub-surface structures or facilities.

The executive says that new technologies make it possible for engineers to bring information from different sources together and visualise them on the cloud, making project delivery more efficient.

Bentley acquired Netherlands-based Plaxis, a geotechnical software company, and Canadian soil engineering software SoilVision earlier this year to complement its borehole reporting and data management software, Gint.

The acquisitions extend Bentley Systems’ portfolio, which already includes digital design and workflow and asset performance management applications as well as substructure analysis and design.