Every day at Geo Week News, we publish the most important press releases from the industry to keep those within the industry up-to-date with all of the news they need to know. Of course, we know it can be difficult to keep up with everything coming in, so we’re going to look back at the week that was in the news every Friday to recap the biggest happenings of the last five days. Today, we have the announcement of new contracts being awarded by NGA, new products, and more.
NGA Announces Selectees for $200M Contract
In the first half of 2024, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) released the solicitation for Luno B, for the purpose of providing the national security community with timely access to high-quality commercial geospatial intelligence. After months of going through proposals, the agency has awarded the indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract to a group of 13 vendors, whose identities were officially announced this week. The list, which can be seen here, includes some of the biggest names in the geospatial and Earth observation sector today, including but not limited to Maxar, Planet Labs, BlackSky, and NV5. NGA indicates that the contract has a five-year base ordering period with a $200 million ceiling, and the vendors will compete on a full and open basis for future delivery orders.
New Products for AEC and Geospatial Professionals
This past week saw a couple of new products being announced for professionals in the AEC and geospatial communities. We’ll start with an announcement from the Nemetschek Group, one of the biggest providers of software for the AEC/O sector in the world. This week, the group unveiled a preview of their new AI Assistant, the first product of its kind to be introduced by the group. This initial offering, which was introduced by Munich’s BAU 2025, will be for Archicad and BIMx as an integrated AI chatbot for the Graphisoft products. We’ve talked over the last few months about artificial intelligence’s role in the AEC industry really taking form in the coming year, and this could be an example of how we continue to see the technology implemented, acting as an assistant within these widely used software solutions.
Shifting over to the surveying industry, we also saw an announcement from GNSS solution provider Septentrio, who announced the extension of their mosaic family of company GNSS receiver modules. The new modules will “broaden the field of applications powered by Septentrio technology since they offer a size reduction of 60% and a power consumption reduction of 40% compared to the mosaic-X5 receiver.” Notably, this announcement comes on the heels of the company’s acquisition by Hexagon. That acquisition will not officially go through until later this year, but this shows that the company will continue to iterate on its offerings even as it prepares to go under Hexagon’s umbrella.
Other News
This week, Trimble announced a new tiered subscription bundle, allowing smaller firms to gain access to their technology with lower cost to entry and less risk. This builds off of previous subscription offerings, which is something Geo Week News discussed with Trimble’s Gregor Willhauck at last year’s Intergeo.
In the world of Earth observation, constellr announced the successful launch of its first thermal infrared monitoring satellite. They hope that the data coming from this satellite, which will continuously capture high-resolution thermal images of the Earth, will enable smarter decisions around actions with environmental impacts on our planet.
The geospatial industry is starting to show its value to a number of industries around the world, and this week we saw Suzano, the world’s largest pulp supplier, agree to an agreement with an AI firm, Marvin. They will leverage the AI from Marvin to provide geospatial intelligence for their forestry work.
Speaking of cross-industry partnerships, Sharper Shape this week announced a five-year agreement with Pacific Gas & Electric. Sharper Shape’s software allows for the analysis of lidar and imagery data for assets and shows the value that large utility firms are seeing from digital twins.
Finally, this week Bentley Systems announced the appointment of James Lee as the company’s new Chief Operating Officer. Lee comes over from Google, where he served as general manager for startups and AI at Google Cloud. This continues a shifting of executives around Bentley after the retirement of Greg and Keith Bentley, two of the company’s founders, over the last couple of years.
