Here’s what you missed from Bentley’s Year in Infrastructure 2025 event in Amsterdam, plus more engineering software news.
This is Engineering Paper, and here’s the latest design and simulation software news.
Bentley System’s annual Year in Infrastructure (YII) event took place last week in Amsterdam, capping off with the presentation of Bentley’s 2025 Going Digital awards for innovation in infrastructure.
There was a particular theme to the event that won’t surprise anyone.
“It’s clear we are at the threshold of a generational shift in infrastructure. Just as CAD and 3D modeling transformed engineering decades ago, AI is redefining how the next generation of infrastructure professionals will work,” Nicholas Cumins, Bentley’s CEO, said in his opening keynote.
Bentley announced a new generation of “AI-enabled” applications starting with OpenSite+ for civil site design. Bentley first announced OpenSite+ last year, but it has now moved from early access (“basically beta,” according to Cumins in a press briefing) to limited availability (“that software can be used in production”). The final step is general availability, but Bentley didn’t say when it expects that for OpenSite+.
Joining OpenSite+ in Bentley’s next-gen lineup are the newly announced OpenUtilities Substation+ for substation design, which will enter early access in November, and Synchro+ for construction planning and coordination, which will enter early access in December.
One of the AI features available in the next-gen products is the Bentley Copilot, an integrated AI assistant. I saw a brief but intriguing demo of Bentley Copilot at YII 2025, which goes beyond product support by actually interacting with models (e.g. “change the parking angle to 60 degrees” in OpenSite+).
Cumins told me that the Bentley Copilot is built on commercial LLMs (e.g. ChatGPT or Claude), but it’s not dependent on any particular one; Bentley can switch to whichever model provides the best performance as they all strive to outdo one another (“I think we’ve swapped it already a couple times,” Cumins said). The underlying LLM is not user-selectable.
Bentley’s next-gen applications aren’t only defined by their embrace of AI, Cumins told me. “Their fundamental architecture is also quite different, because they’re all organized around a digital twin,” he said. Part of what that means is that the new applications are fully cloud-based, opening the door to modern software capabilities such as multiple users working on the same project concurrently. Indeed, Bentley showed off just that capability in Substation+.
In a final piece of AI news, which Cumins told me was his favorite of the YII 2025 announcements, Bentley is launching an infrastructure AI co-innovation initiative to collaborate with engineering firms on the best way to bring AI to the industry.
“I’m very much looking forward to those conversations about how we can help even more,” Cumins said.
I’ll be publishing my Q&A with Cumins soon, so stay tuned for more from Bentley’s CEO.
Cesium is spreading
Another big thread at YII 2025 was the continuing integration of Cesium into the Bentley portfolio. Cesium, which Bentley acquired last year, develops technology for visualizing geospatial data.
“Cesium, pretty quickly, is getting integrated into many of our products that have a geospatial context, as a default thing that you can use when you’re designing, building, or operating infrastructure,” Patrick Cozzi, the founder of Cesium and now Bentley’s chief platform officer, told me.
For example, Bentley added support for 3D Tiles (an open standard developed by Cesium) into MicroStation 2025, the latest version of Bentley’s CAD software for infrastructure design. Cesium is also the geospatial engine for Infrastructure Cloud Connect, a new hub for navigating projects and assets that Bentley announced in Amsterdam.
Bentley also announced that it’s adding reality modeling services from iTwin Capture to Cesium ion, Cesium’s SaaS platform for optimizing and streaming geospatial data. That means Cesium ion will be able to create meshes, point clouds, and Gaussian splats from imagery and integrate it with other sources of data in the 3D Tiles format.
And then there’s iTwin Engage, a new platform that “blends iTwin, Cesium, Unreal Engine, and open standards to let teams and communities step inside projects before they’re built.” Currently in early access (read: beta), iTwin Engage allows users to develop 3D visualizations of their projects that stay up to date with a live connection to the project’s digital twin.
“iTwin Engage is built on Unreal Engine,” Cozzi told me, “so it brings all the game tech, that really amazing viz. It’s built on the Cesium plugin for Unreal Engine to bring in the geospatial context. Then it’s built on iTwin APIs that bring in design models, which are then converted to 3D Tiles.”
The Year in Infrastructure 2025 Going Digital Awards
And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for: Bentley’s 2025 Going Digital Awards. Several people described the ceremony to me, a first-time attendee, as “the Oscars of infrastructure.” It was, indeed, a swanky affair. I chose the beef and the “optional” in black tie optional.
Here are the 2025 Going Digital awards winners:
- Bridges and Tunnels: Italferr S.p.A. (Italy) – Leveraging Digital Technologies for Improved Infrastructure Management
- Cities, Campuses, and Facilities: Voyants Solutions Private Ltd. (India) – Preparation of Masterplan, Detailed Design and Project Management of Atal Puram Township, Agra, India
- Construction: Deloitte and Vale (Brazil) – SYNCHRO 4D Powering the World’s First Iron Ore Briquetting Plant
- Energy Production: Baosteel Engineering & Technology Group Co., Ltd. (China) – Digital Intelligent Construction Project for a Steel Plant Based on Bentley Technology
- Geospatial and Reality Modeling: Al Madinah Region Development Authority (MDA) (Saudi Arabia) – Manarah Urban Data Platform
- Project Delivery: Egis (France) – Canal Seine Nord Europe
- Rail and Transit: PT Kereta Api Indonesia (Persero) (Indonesia) – Smart Infrastructure by KAI & AssetWise Linear Analytics
- Roads and Highways: Jabatan Kerja Raya Sarawak (JKRS) (Malaysia) – Sarawak Sabah Link Road Phase 2
- Structural Engineering: AVS Engineers | ISID Architect, Nikhil Mahashur and Associates, Structural Engineer – Siddharth Sharma (India) – Fairmont Udaipur Palace
- Subsurface Modeling and Analysis: Fervo Energy (United States) – Cape Station
- Transmission and Distribution: China Energy Engineering Group Guangxi Electric Power Design Institute Co., Ltd. (China) – Application of GIS+BIM Digital Intelligence Technology to the Entire Lifecycle of China Southern Power Grid’s Guangxi Nanning 500kV Power Transmission and Transformation Project
- Water and Wastewater: PT Wika Tirta Jaya Jatiluhur (WTJJ) (Indonesia) – SPAM Regional Jatiluhur I: Transforming Water for a Better Tomorrow
Congratulations to all the winners.
In other news, three 2026 releases
- Altair has released HPCWorks 2026, the latest version of its high performance computing platform. HPCWorks 2026 has new features including advanced GPU integration, expanded AI and machine learning tools, and extended reporting, according to Altair.
- CAD developer IronCAD has released IronCAD 2026. Among other upgrades, IronCAD 2026 adds multiple application window support, general modeling and drawing improvements, and an enhanced AI chatbot.
- Allplan has launched a new version of its BIM software, Allplan 2026. Like Graphisoft Archicad 29, which I wrote about last week, Allplan 2026 features the AI assistant that parent company Nemetschek Group announced back in January.
One last link
Engineering.com sister publication Design World has launched a new monthly column devoted to engineering ethics. It’s penned by senior editor Miles Budimir, who’s been teaching the subject to engineering students for nearly two decades. Read Miles’ kickoff column on Design World: Ethical Engineering: A new monthly column.
Got news, tips, comments, or complaints? Send them my way: malba@wtwhmedia.com.
