Here's what you missed from Bentley's Year in Infrastructure 2025 event in Amsterdam, as well as other engineering software news.
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Bentley System's annual Year in Infrastructure (YII) event took place last week in Amsterdam and concluded with the presentation of Bentley's 2025 Going Digital Awards for Innovation in Infrastructure.
The event had a specific theme that would surprise no one.
“It's clear that we are on the cusp 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,” Bentley CEO Nicholas Cumins said in his opening remarks.
Bentley announced a new generation of “AI-enabled” applications, starting with OpenSite+ for civil site planning. Bentley first announced OpenSite+ last year, but now it has moved from early access (“essentially beta,” Cumins said in a press conference) to limited availability (“that the software can be used in production”). The final step is general availability, but Bentley hasn't said when that's expected for OpenSite+.
Joining OpenSite+ in Bentley's next-gen lineup are the newly announced OpenUtilities Substation+ for substation planning, entering early access in November, and Synchro+ for construction planning and coordination, entering early access in December.
One of the AI features available in next-generation products is Bentley Copilot, a built-in AI assistant. I saw a short but interesting demo of Bentley Copilot at YII 2025 that goes beyond product support and actually interacts with models (e.g. “Change 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 is not dependent on a specific LLM; Bentley can switch to the model that offers the best performance as everyone strives to outdo each other (“I think we've swapped it a few times,” Cumins said). The underlying LLM cannot be selected by the user.
“Bentley’s next-generation applications aren’t just about leveraging AI,” Cumins told me. “Their fundamental architecture is also very different because they are all organized around a digital twin,” he said. This means, among other things, that the new applications are completely cloud-based, opening the door to modern software functions such as allowing multiple users to work on the same project at the same time. In fact, Bentley has demonstrated exactly this capability in the Substation+.
In a final piece of AI news that Cumins told me was his favorite YII 2025 announcement, Bentley is launching an infrastructure AI co-innovation initiative to work with engineering firms to best bring AI to the industry.
“I’m really looking forward to talking about how we can help even more,” Cumins said.
I will be posting my questions and answers with Cumins soon. So stay tuned to hear more from Bentley’s CEO.
Cesium spreads
Another big topic at YII 2025 was the further integration of Cesium into the Bentley portfolio. Cesium, which was acquired by Bentley last year, develops geospatial data visualization technologies.
“Cesium is being integrated pretty quickly into many of our products that have a geospatial context, as a standard element that you can use when you design, build or operate 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) in 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 project and asset navigation that Bentley announced in Amsterdam.
Bentley also announced that it is adding reality modeling services from iTwin Capture to Cesium ion, Cesium's SaaS platform for optimizing and streaming geospatial data. This means that Cesium Ion will be able to create meshes, point clouds and Gaussian blobs from images and integrate them with other data sources in 3D tile format.
And then there's iTwin Engage, a new platform that “combines iTwin, Cesium, Unreal Engine and open standards to give teams and communities the ability to jump into projects before they are built.” Currently in early access (read: beta), iTwin Engage allows users to develop 3D visualizations of their projects that stay updated with a live connection to the project's digital twin.
“iTwin Engage is based on Unreal Engine,” Cozzi told me, “so it brings all the gaming technology, this really amazing visualization. It's based on the Cesium plugin for Unreal Engine to bring in geospatial context. Then it's based on iTwin APIs, which bring in design models that are then converted into 3D tiles.”
Awards for the Year of Infrastructure 2025 Going Digital
And now comes 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 fancy affair. I chose the beef and the “optional” black tie one.
Here are the winners of the Going Digital Awards 2025:
- Bridges and tunnels: Italferr SpA (Italy) – Use of digital technologies for improved infrastructure management
- Cities, campuses and facilities: LED Solutions Private Ltd. (India) – Preparation of master plan, detailed design and project management of Atal Puram Municipality, Agra, India
- Construction: Deloitte and Vale (Brazil) – SYNCHRO 4D drives the world’s first iron ore briquetting plant
- Energy production: Baosteel Engineering & Technology Group Co., Ltd. (China) – Digital intelligent construction project for a steel mill based on Bentley technology
- Geospatial and reality modeling: Al Madinah Region Development Authority (MDA) (Saudi Arabia) – Manarah Urban Data Platform
- Project management: Yes (France) – Canal Seine Northern Europe
- Rail and transit: PT Kereta Api Indonesia (Persero) (Indonesia) – Intelligent infrastructure from KAI & AssetWise Linear Analytics
- Streets and highways: Sarawak Public Works Department (JKRS) (Malaysia) – Sarawak Sabah Link Road Phase 2
- Civil engineering: AVS engineers | ISID Architect, Nikhil Mahashur and Associates, Civil 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) – Applying GIS+BIM digital intelligence technology to the full life cycle 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 future
Congratulations to all the winners.
Other news includes three releases in 2026
- Altair has released HPCWorks 2026, the latest version of its high-performance computing platform. According to Altair, HPCWorks 2026 has new features including expanded GPU integration, expanded AI and machine learning tools, and expanded reporting.
- The CAD developer IronCAD has released IronCAD 2026. Among other upgrades, IronCAD 2026 adds support for multiple application windows, general modeling and drawing improvements, and an improved 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's sister publication, Design World, has launched a new monthly column dedicated to engineering ethics. The author is senior editor Miles Budimir, who has been teaching the topic to engineering students for almost two decades. Read Miles' kickoff column for Design World: Ethical Engineering: A new monthly column.
Do you have any news, tips, comments or complaints? Send them to me: malba@wtwhmedia.com.