Road and rail planning system wins award

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Apr 25, 2006

System designed to support road and rail planners through the complex process of corridor selection and alignment alternative analysis wins innovation award.

Cadwire, an information site for the CAD, AEC, GIS, EDA and PLM industries, has announced that Quantm has won its 2006 Tech Innovator Award.

The Quantm system was designed to support road and rail planners through the complex process of corridor selection and alignment alternative analysis, taking into account terrain, geology, geometric criteria, engineering and environmental constraints, community values, and construction costs.

"Our system for route alignment selection addresses the challenges faced by the conventional approach to transportation route planning", said Len Bettess, Manager of Business Development and Engineering in the US for Quantm.

"By integrating the large amounts of environmental, engineering, cost and community data into a single 3D analysis, Quantm's system allows project teams to explore all reasonable alternatives quantitatively".

Rick Stavanja, Vice-President of Cyon Research and Editor-in-Chief of Cadwire.net, said: "While there were many worthy nominations for the Cadwire Tech Innovator Award this year, we found that Quantm's software innovatively applies computing power to the world of civil engineering in a way that cut project times dramatically".

"The Quantm system is the first technology tool I have seen that automates the complex, manual and very human process of choosing, analysing and selecting routes for new roads".

Quantm, a Trimble company, was founded in 2000 to develop a route-alignment-selection application.

Over the past five years it has been successfully applied on more than 40 road and rail projects across the USA, along with others in Canada, France, Spain, Portugal, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Indonesia and China.