Case Study: Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) achieves 50% reduction in 3D modeling costs with Bentley ContextCapture

3D Design and Modeling of PG&E Brownfield Substations Streamlines Electrical Grid

Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which operates more than 1,000 transmission and distribution substations across California, faced a major brownfield challenge: most existing substations were documented in 2D, and manually converting those drawings into accurate 3D models was time-consuming (about 120 hours), error-prone, and often required risky field measurements. To modernize its grid design workflow, PG&E turned to Bentley and its ContextCapture, Bentley Substation, and ProjectWise solutions.

Bentley used ContextCapture to generate engineering‑ready reality meshes from imagery and laser scans, referenced those meshes into Bentley Substation for intelligent 3D retrofit design, and managed deliverables via ProjectWise. The approach cut model production from roughly 120 to under 40 resource hours (about an 80‑hour savings), halved required site visits, eliminated many field measurements, and is expected to reduce 3D modeling costs by about 50%; combined with Bentley Substation’s earlier gains, PG&E also realized a 40% reduction in design time and approximately $5.7M in annual savings across ~120 projects.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company

Ralph Hansen

Construction Supervisor