Bentley BECS Alternative: Why Infrastructure Teams Are Choosing CDE Sync.
Looking for a Bentley BECS alternative that works across your full CDE environment? See why infrastructure teams are choosing CDE Sync for cross-platform synchronisation.
If your organisation runs Bentley ProjectWise alongside other Common Data Environments, you have likely encountered the limits of Bentley's own integration tooling. Bentley BECS (Bentley Engineering Content Synchronisation) is a capable product within its own ecosystem, but it was designed to connect Bentley products to downstream enterprise systems, not to bridge the gap between competing CDE platforms.
For infrastructure projects that span multiple vendors, a different approach is needed.
What Bentley BECS Does Well
BECS is a solid choice for organisations running an all-Bentley stack. It connects ProjectWise to enterprise asset management systems, ERP platforms, and operations tools within the Bentley Infrastructure Cloud. It handles Bentley's own metadata schemas, workflow rules, and document management logic effectively.
For organisations where the primary challenge is getting ProjectWise data into Bentley iTwin or IBM Maximo, BECS is a legitimate solution.
Where Bentley BECS Stops
The limitation is scope. BECS cannot synchronise data between ProjectWise and non-Bentley CDEs. If your project uses Autodesk Construction Cloud, Oracle Aconex, Microsoft SharePoint, Procore, or Asite alongside ProjectWise, BECS cannot bridge those platforms. It was not built to.
This is a critical gap on joint venture infrastructure projects, where different organisations in the supply chain use different CDE platforms. The principal contractor may run ProjectWise. A tier-one subcontractor may be on ACC. A client may require submissions into Aconex. BECS cannot connect these environments.
The result is manual file transfer. Engineers download from one platform, rename files, reformat metadata, and upload to another. On large infrastructure projects this process runs thousands of times per year and costs well in excess of what most organisations budget for it.
How CDE Sync Compares
CDE Sync was built specifically to address cross-vendor CDE synchronisation. It supports eleven platforms including Bentley ProjectWise, Autodesk Construction Cloud, BIM360, Oracle Aconex, Microsoft SharePoint, Procore, Asite, InEight, 12D Synergy, Autodesk Forma, and Trimble Connect.
Unlike BECS, CDE Sync handles the metadata translation required when moving documents between platforms with fundamentally different schemas. Bentley uses its own metadata structure. Autodesk uses another. Aconex uses another still. CDE Sync's mapping engine transforms metadata between these schemas automatically, preserving ISO 19650 compliance throughout.
Setup takes 15 to 30 minutes through a no-code wizard. There is no infrastructure to provision, no servers to manage, and no developer time required. CDE Sync is hosted on Microsoft Azure across dedicated regions in Australia, Europe, and the United States, and holds SOC 2 Type II certification.
It is worth noting that CDE Sync and BECS are not always competitors. In environments where ProjectWise is the primary CDE and the integration challenge is connecting it to other AECO platforms, CDE Sync handles the cross-vendor layer that BECS does not cover.
The Practical Difference
The question is not whether BECS or CDE Sync is the better product in isolation. The question is what your project environment actually looks like. If your supply chain uses a single Bentley stack, BECS may be sufficient. If your project involves multiple CDEs from different vendors, which is the reality on most large infrastructure, transport, and energy projects, you need a platform that was built for that environment.