Bentley Systems has announced the decision to acquire Canadian group Alworx Inc., the company said in a statement.

The infrastructure specialist is known for its comprehensive software solutions for advancing the design, construction and operations of infrastructure at a global level. Meanwhile Quebec-based group Alworx has been in the market since 2011, with experience in providing artificial intelligence (AI) and sensor technologies and services for the industrial, aerospace and defense sectors.

Andre Villemaire, the co-founder and president of AIworx, said: “AIworx has been providing machine learning and IoT technologies and services to help organisations generate, understand, and act on data so they can make better business decisions.”

Villemaire added: “The biggest opportunities we’ve worked on have to do with improving infrastructure asset performance on an industrial scale, by way of the data from connected machines, instrumentation, sensors, and communications systems—and we’re excited to dedicate ourselves to that advancement.”

He also remarked that by incorporating their tools with Bentley’s services for digital twins, infrastructure operators can now multiply the potential benefits of machine learning and Internet of Things (IoT).

According to a statement from Bentley, the addition of AIworx brings advancements in data collection and analysis to leverage infrastructure engineering digital twins, continuously updated with real-time contextual information, to optimize productivity, operations, and maintenance.

Francois Valois, VP of portfolio development for Bentley Systems, said: “Machine learning and IoT technologies have created the opportunity for profound improvements in productivity and efficiency of infrastructure.”

“Our new colleagues from AIworx have already been delivering on this potential, and now, leveraging the analytics visibility, which Bentley’s digital twin cloud services uniquely provide, these advancements from going digital will accelerate exponentially,” he noted.