Jugal Makwana , Bentley’s Industry Sales Director of Transportation, says the software also helps cut down costs. “By using MX Roads, the cost of the project in case of the Vijayawada-Hyderabad and Vijayawada-Machlipatnam stretches on NH 9 was cut down to 15 per cent. In the Srinagar project, the 3D designing helped shave off some eight months from the project schedule. The software helps reduce time taken in detailed designing of roads by 60 per cent. By using MX Roads, we came up with digital terrain models (DTMs) to visualise terrain and slip zones prone to rock slides on NH 1A in the Srinagar-Banihal area,”says Makhwana.

He adds that the software can do much more. “ MX Roads has been selected as the platform to develop software to see what energy saving can be done on a statistically viable basis on various road types, single carriageways, dual carriageways and motorways both in road construction and by vehicles using the roads. This project is currently being done for the European Union but can be easily implemented in India to ensure that thousands of kilometres of roads are designed as energy-efficient and help reduce cost to operate vehicles,”adds Makhwana.