Advancing Infrastructure

Little about the product’s name hinted at revolution. MicroStation V8 sounded like the epitome of incremental improvement. But Bentley was quite literally breaking the mold this time. After 15 years of continuity, the development team had decided to change their flagship software’s file format. Intergraph had built its original DGN format on what Keith called “1970s technology,” and the expiration date had come. Its 32-bit integer-based coordinate system, initially attractive for its efficient use of a bygone era’s underpowered hardware, had become a straitjacket compared to the 64-bit floating-point system a new format would enable. And that was just one of many “stark limitations,” ranging from strict constraints on layers and file sizes to the vexing six-character limit on cell names.

Breaking free of these restrictions held a “really big” upside, Ray said. A 32-bit integer coordinate system “gives you 4 billion discrete numbers,” for instance, “and you can’t represent a number that is between those integers.” An architect designing a 400-foot-tall building could probably live with that constraint. But for someone plotting a hundred-mile railroad line—or an intricate part requiring precision to the thousandth of an inch—the error potential was less tolerable. Going to 64-bit floating point would deliver the functional equivalent of infinite.

Even for workaday users with relatively modest needs, the old file format had become increasingly irritating in a world where operating systems offered ever more flexibility. “If you think about naming a whole engineering catalog with six characters,” Cortesi said, “you can imagine what those names look like. So everybody wanted friendly names, but we couldn’t do that.” Many users also wanted to be able to read and write DWG files, the format used by AutoCAD software, without having to use cumbersome translation tools.

MicroStation V8 would enable all this and more. Nevertheless, Keith knew that it represented a monumental lift not only for Bentley’s programmers but for a sales force tasked with persuading users to switch. “There were some new concepts embodied in V8 that took a lot of work,” he said. “First of all, all of our applications had to be, not rewritten, but essentially recreated. And that was a huge transition.”

The continuity break was equally challenging for a company that had cultivated deep loyalty partly via backward compatibility. “When people are using one version of your product and you come out with a new version that uses a different file format,” Keith observed, “they have to decide, on each project, are you going to use this one or that one? Because once you start using the new one, the old software doesn’t work. It can’t read the new files.”

The only sure way to convince users was to demonstrate, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that V8 was head-and-shoulders better and easier to use. And at 3:30 a.m. in the Philadelphia Convention Center, with about a thousand of them due to stream in for a sneak peek in a matter of hours, Cortesi and Anderson couldn’t get it to do anything at all.

“There we sat on the edge of the stage,” Anderson recalled, “desperately struggling with the software. We tried everything, including installing and reinstalling several versions of MicroStation, each built within the last few days and each suffering from defects handling DWG files that rendered our plans indemonstrable.”

“Literally everything was breaking,” Cortesi remembered. At about 5 a.m. they retreated to grab an hour of sleep. “We just said, ‘We need to leave and regroup.’” The keynote speeches were scheduled to begin at 8:15 a.m. Keith was batting second. The V8 demo was going to be the cornerstone of his address. And that was not the only significant thing planned for the 2000 Bentley International Users Conference. Greg would also be publicly introduced as the new CEO, culminating one of the most challenging passages in the company’s existence.

These changes would proceed at varying paces as the 21st century got under way. On the software development side, Bentley envisioned an expanded role for ProjectWise. But insofar as MicroStation remained the beating heart of the company, much was riding on V8.

The “sneak peek” envisioned for the September 2000 Bentley International Users Conference was just that—a preview of a software package that would wind up taking another 13 months to launch into the marketplace. The pressure was nevertheless high. This was not a good time to take a faceplant in the public spotlight. Yet as dawn approached on the morning of Keith’s keynote, things looked to be on a collision course with Barry’s rueful axiom: “the more important the demo, the more likely it is to be a complete, utter, unmitigated disaster.”

Between 3:30 and 5:00 a.m., Tom Anderson and Gino Cortesi pruned the presentation back, “trying to salvage something that would show off what we already knew,” Anderson recalled, which was that “MicroStation V8 was the most important generation in the history of the product and included groundbreaking DGN format enhancements—removing limits on number of levels, cell size, design plane, reference file attachments, and more. These advancements were not only critical to MicroStation users, but also paramount to our success in reading and writing Autodesk’s DWG file format”—which was supposed to be “the central theme of the main stage demo.”

Succumbing to a “very terse script,” they snatched two blinks of sleep before cleaning up and returning.

“Like 20 minutes before the presentation,” Cortesi said, “Ray finally gave us one last change that we downloaded. Then we hooked it up.”

“Keith was rightfully concerned with the instability of the software,” Anderson remembered. But at this point there was only one thing to do: “We took the stage in support of our CTO, fingers crossed.”

The idea was to play-act the role of an architect-of-record carrying out change orders in coordination with a design architect and consulting engineers, working across software platforms to show off V8’s ability to directly modify AutoCAD software’s DWG files. “Gino was running MicroStation on one end of the stage as I ran AutoCAD software on the other,” Anderson said. As they got going, Ray’s final patch seemed to be holding. Working on a design file that depicted the very room in which the audience was sitting, “We volleyed back and forth making changes.” They kept the edits simple so as not to push their luck, but the conference attendees, unaware that “the software was being held together by a wish and a prayer,” watched with rapt attention.

“We finished with the rendering that Jerry Flynn did of the Convention Center using particle tracing,” Cortesi said, “to show how light was bouncing around it.” According to CAD historian David Weisberg, who was covering the event for his newsletter Engineering Automation Report, the “standing-room-only crowd” erupted into cheers.

It was standing ovations, literally,” Cortesi recalled. “At the end users were all standing and applauding for like five minutes!

Looking back years later, when risk-filled live demos had gone the way of teletype terminals and floppy disks, Anderson dubbed it “V8’s moment of glory.”

Bentley’s 21st-century “commitment to comprehensiveness” in the infrastructure engineering sector was marked partly by acquisitions. One of the biggest, both in terms of strategic positioning and deal value, came after an apparent softening of the relationship with Intergraph, whose stake in Bentley had been reduced to 33 percent as the result of various arbitration proceedings. On December 26, 2000, Bentley Systems purchased Intergraph’s InRoads civil engineering software along with related plot-services and raster-conversion software.

The $35.4 million deal was attractive in virtually every respect but its timing. At a late stage in the proceedings, facing deteriorating credit conditions economy-wide, Bentley’s bank balked on a loan commitment. Alternative options were dismal. “It was not a good time to be looking for venture capital or growth capital,” Malcolm Walter remembered. “So the terms were not great.” What emerged as a path forward was more than a little daunting. To rescue the transaction, Greg, Keith, and Barry would have to personally guarantee the debt and raise half the sum externally.

This was a weighty matter. “In my case,” said Greg, “I was wealthy from my first company.” His brothers, however, were richer in equity than cash, and a loan default would impair all equity—including the growing portion owned by employees not named Bentley.

‘we referred to each other as colleagues’ as a sign of common purpose and collaboration.

“Personal guarantees were not an abstract notion,” Greg reflected. Going forward, things would need to change. For one, “We were going to have a CEO who was 100 percent CEO—and not 90 percent CTO,” as Keith had been. “And we were also going to look different in the way that we worked with one another,” he said, indicating not just his brothers but the company as a whole.

“We were going to have our people known as colleagues,” Greg decreed. “I wasn’t going to prohibit the word employee” the way he had outlawed the word customer, “but I was just going to hope that we referred to each other as colleagues” as a sign of common purpose and collaboration.

This was more than just a semantic shift. The philosophy underlying it was quite subtle—particularly in the context of software development, where significant differences in productivity were a commonly accepted phenomenon.

“Your best developers aren’t twice as productive as the average developer,” Jim Bartlett reflected. “They’re ten times as productive.”

Keith made a similar observation. “You couldn’t hire ten programmers to solve a really tough problem,” he said, “if you don’t have the one person who’s able to come up with the plan.”

The flip side of the coin was that no matter how one superstar programmer’s value stacked up against that of a supporting cast, the secret sauce lay in fruitful collaboration. As an initial stranger to the world of engineering, Greg saw this with the special clarity of an outsider.

“The people who gravitate to financial careers—my Wharton classmates and so forth—are good people,” he reflected. “But they’re out for themselves. And they have a lot of opportunity to make a return on themselves.”

A completely different ethos marked the engineering world to which his brothers belonged. “Engineers have to work in teams, and they really are people who care as much about the group effort and outcome,” Greg said. “There’s just something about the realm in which we operate: that culture of people working collegially, helping each other just as a matter of temperament.”

Bentley’s software engineers, he felt, reflected the culture of the infrastructure engineers they served. “We recognize that not all engineers are created equal,” Greg said. “Certain people have the capability to do 10 times the work and generate 100 times the value” as others. “But that’s especially true if they don’t feel they’re any different than the others,” he stressed.

It was of course important to attract and retain top-level programmers. But that was best done via equity sharing and other incentives—“not by creating a different status.”

As Bentley transitioned to direct distribution, Greg brought the same attitude to sales. He modeled the company’s quota system after the one he’d encountered at SunGard, whose “100 Percent Club” rewarded every salesperson who made his or her quota—not just the top achievers. “I saw the importance of a collegial sales culture,” he said. He didn’t want to preside over a company whose “top salespeople stepped on the heads of the others to make sure they got the credit.” So Bentley set ambitious quotas and rewarded everyone who met them with an annual AccountAbility trip, usually a tropical getaway that gave colleagues and their significant others a chance to downshift and bask in praise.

“And instead of, as at most companies, stock options only being awarded to the top people—and especially the top people in sales management—I said every quota achiever will get stock options,” no matter how big or small their accounts were, Greg explained.

It makes such a difference to our accounts and users and prospects to be able to put in front of them someone like them, who’s an engineer and speaks their language.

“Our first-line account managers are heroes,” he went on, “and every first-line account manager who achieved their quota was going to get stock options. The sales executive at the top would allocate his share of options, and if it came to me and it didn’t include options for every quota carrier, I would send it back and say, ‘You either send me something that gives a stock option award to every quota carrier—or I will.’”

While software developers could point to specific programming achievements and salespeople could tally up their revenues, another group’s contributions were harder to measure: the “front-line engineers,” as Greg called them, who interfaced directly with users. Bentley Systems was now too big, and its product lines too varied, for the brothers to field phone calls themselves. But Keith’s dictum that “everyone’s in support” lived on in a highly trained corps of men and women who stood at the intersection of traditional engineering disciplines and fast-moving software.

“Our secret factor of success were these thousand engineers we had within the company who were credentialed civil and structural engineers,” Greg reflected as Bentley neared its 40th anniversary. It makes such a difference to our accounts and users and prospects to be able to put in front of them someone like them, who’s an engineer and speaks their language, but is also a virtuoso software person and can show them how to do with the software what’s in their mind. Repeatedly over our history, we’ve been reminded that such people are worth their weight in gold.”

Bentley Systems marked its organizational hierarchies with titles much like any other large company. But from the C-suite to the reception desk, everyone was a colleague.

A year after purchasing Intergraph’s civil applications, Bentley acquired the remainder of Geopak. Gabe Norona became head of civil engineering software for Bentley, whose commanding position in the US civil engineering market was bolstered further by the 2003 acquisition of Infrasoft, whose origins lay in the United Kingdom.

By the time Norona arrived, Bentley was turning a corner in terms of financial discipline—as the Geopak founder gleaned from a wry exchange with David Nation when the parties closed the deal. In lieu of Exton’s Holiday Inn, Norona had booked a room at the Ritz-Carlton in downtown Philadelphia.

“That’s a nice hotel,” Nation remarked as the men signed the final paperwork.

“I love it!” Norona exclaimed.

“Enjoy it,” came the rejoinder from Bentley’s general counsel, “because this is the last time you’re ever going to stay at a Ritz-Carlton.”

The memory kept Norona laughing for 20 years: “He was right! David Nation wanted to tighten those buttons.”

Bentley was also retailoring its organizational structure. Brad Workman and Bhupinder Singh headed two branches of a software development group overseen by Buddy Cleveland. Singh credited Cleveland as a skilled motivator and synthesizer of information whose talent for listening suited him well for an enterprise expanding rapidly via acquisition. His team absorbed a steady stream of entrepreneurially minded talent across a variety of disciplines.

The same went for the distribution side. As Malcolm Walter explained, “We went from a geographic-leaning organization to an industry-focused organization, and that shifted things—but it didn’t change the people. We just gave them new assignments.” Ted Lamboo and John Riddle, who had run sales overseas and in North America, respectively, translated their “yin and yang” relationship into industry-vertical terms. Lamboo took charge of civil engineering and geospatial (government and utilities) products; Riddle headed the building and plant sectors.

There was a story behind each of these numbers—a way Bentley’s software had played a modest but nonetheless significant role in improving some aspect of people’s lives, be it via the efficiency of transportation systems, the reliability of electricity networks, or the management of wastewater.

At the 2002 Bentley International Users Conference, many colleagues were stirred by a presentation that had particular emotional salience after the 2001 BIUC had been canceled on account of the September 11 attacks. Walker Lee Evey, the man in charge of a long-term Pentagon renovation initiative, described how MicroStation played an unseen role after American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the building’s western wall. In the wake of the terrorist attack, MicroStation-based engineering models of the Pentagon quickly produced detailed structural drawings for use by rescue crews, structural engineers, and law enforcement officers.¹² The digitalization of the 1943 building’s construction and maintenance data into comprehensive 3D models also paved the way for reconstruction to be completed within a single year.

Flyer for the 2002 BIUC in Atlantic City

The company now derived more than 60 percent of its revenues from subscriptions.¹³ That ratio would climb further with the implementation of the Enterprise License Subscription (ELS) program, whereby users paid an annual fee based on the previous year’s consumption of Bentley’s increasingly varied product lines. “The beauty of ELS,” Walter explained, “is that Bentley had something like 100 products, of which MicroStation accounted for over 50 percent of our revenues.” That left the other 99 competing for attention. “We had all these tools that were specifically designed to do something, but the barrier for a user was purchasing a license. ELS said, ‘We’re going to put a pipe into your facility from which you can access every one of our products—and you’ll only pay a subscription fee on those products that you actually end up using.’”

With key assistance from Bob Hewitt, whom Walter called “one of the most amazing data analyzers I’ve ever worked with,” ELS connected more users with products across the “Bentley Continuum,” creating new revenue streams and amplifying the capabilities of users.

Every maturing company confronts the question of how to continually renew its dynamism. Bentley answered it partly by viewing acquisitions as a source of fresh talent. Keith and Barry—who acted as co-CTOs beginning in 2002—were particularly attuned to what kept the founders of small engineering-oriented companies engaged. “They want to have some independent voice,” Keith reflected. “They want to feel like they’re making a difference.”

“So often we let them operate more independently,” especially at the outset, added Barry, “so they could see that they could move the ball.” Sacrificing some of the nimbleness that comes with having the final say in all matters, these small-company founders gained the ability to “solve bigger problems,” as Keith put it, and increase their reach along with Bentley’s growing global footprint.

Reassignment could provide another spur for personal growth and motivation. “If we acquired a company for its technology,” Barry noted, “sometimes we’d decide we wanted the principal of the company to take over something else” within Bentley Systems.

Carey Mann was one among many colleagues who exemplified this dynamic. After he and Styli Camateros sold the remainder of HMR to Bentley in 2000, Mann took up a post under Buddy Cleveland in software development. There, he collaborated with Tuomo Parjanen, the former head of Opti Inter-Consult (acquired in 1996), on ProjectWise. Yet Mann’s trajectory within Bentley Systems included several years as Chief Marketing Officer, and he retired in 2022 as VP of Investor Relations.

In 2002, Bentley purchased a minority stake in Rebis, which developed software including AutoPLANT for the design and operation of industrial systems.¹⁴ Within a couple of years, it was acquired outright, bringing its CEO Jeff Hollings into the fold, where the charismatic Kiwi became a senior vice president of Bentley’s industrial and energy group.

Styli Camateros presenting a BE Award to City of Helsinki

Bentley acquired Haestad Methods in 2004, bolstering its position as a leader in software for modeling water systems and gaining its CTO, Bob Mankowski. The 2005 acquisitions of STAAD and RAM International, which developed software for structural engineering, brought aboard two colleagues who would prove consequential in the years to come: Santanu Das and Gus Bergsma. Another, Vonnie Smith, came the same year via the acquisition of her company Cook-Hulbert, whose ExpertDesigner software became the basis of Bentley’s OpenUtilities line.

“We had more than our fair share of success in keeping CEOs motivated,” reflected Bhupinder Singh. “I think we did a better job integrating acquisitions than most other companies I know,” he added, crediting a certain “humility” within Bentley’s leadership for making it work.

In fact, lateral shifts were a prime way Bentley reinvigorated its workforce and cultivated long employment relationships across the board. “I think every two years I had a different job,” Singh remarked, counting nine positions over the course of his 26 years at Bentley. He chalked it up to a character trait that animated many other colleagues as well. “I got uncomfortable when I got comfortable, so I would always put my hat in the ring for something new. And when they saw me put a hat in the ring, they would give me new stuff. So it sort of fed on itself.”

That flexibility, and the company’s receptiveness to it, enabled him to continue making discernable contributions within an organization that grew by a factor of 40 between his first day and his last. His positions ranged from varied roles in software development to a rewarding two-year stint running sales in his native India. “Bhupinder,” Greg reflected “has probably had the most influence on the most of our products of anyone.”

In terms of geographical influence, it was hard to beat JB Monnier. In 2004, the globetrotting Frenchman who’d held roles in both products and sales took charge of Asia—where Bentley continued to operate on a territorial rather than industry-oriented model. Monnier wasted no time diving into deep water. “All the lawyers told us, ‘You can go anywhere you want—Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul—but just don’t go to China, please,’” he recalled. The status quo had been to “keep the big guys away from the messiness” by operating at arm’s length in the People’s Republic.

“And I said, ‘You’re kidding! Guys, we are in the infrastructure business. Fifty percent of the world’s concrete is being poured in China. That’s where the business happens—we have to be on top of the beast.” Settling in Beijing, he threw himself headlong into the challenge for 11 years. Monnier credited much of his success there to two women. The first was his wife, a Japanese speaker who swiftly achieved proficiency in Mandarin. Caroline’s embrace of their new adventure had an inestimable impact, both in terms of amplifying JB’s cultural competence and setting the stage for a sustainable family life for them and their school-aged children.

Vonnie Smith’s company Cook-Hulbert was acquired in 2005

The second was Florence Zheng, a Wharton MBA who’d worked for Shell and GE Energy China after majoring in English language and literature at Shanghai International Studies University in the early 1990s. She joined Bentley Systems in 2005 and had what Monnier called a “stunning” effect. Combining English fluency with a “global perspective” and “strong experience of HR at GE, which was the master of HR at the time I hired her,” Zheng quickly became indispensable. “The way we worked together is what made success in Asia possible,” Monnier said. Beyond her insights into the country’s subtleties and social networks, she supplied a “complementary vision” about how to develop a high-functioning team. “We did more together than any one of us could have done on our own,” Monnier said. “It was trust. She was somebody I trusted fully, and vice versa.

Their progress was driven substantially by China’s hydropower industry, whose breakneck growth had large engineering firms swimming in work on small dams, canals, and transmission lines.

Five years into their partnership, the results were clear. In 2011, Bentley derived 19 percent of its $523 million in revenues from Asia, including a two-year doubling of revenues from Greater China, where 42 percent of software license sales were to new accounts.¹⁵

Monnier was not the only colleague to recognize Zheng’s value. In 2015, Bentley named her its first Chief Talent Officer. As Greg remarked after her 2022 retirement, “There’s one person ever that I’ve asked to have their office be right next to me, at my right hand, and that’s Florence.”

George Church was “another one who always was happy when he was traveling the world,” Greg reflected. “And it was a great advantage for us to have people like them.”

Church played a key role in the gestation and roll-out of ProjectWise, a data-management platform that matured during the 2000s into a product rivaling MicroStation for importance.

“It was a big step up from our history of supporting individual users,” Greg said. “What existed at the time was sort of file management for one person, but our incumbent users were in enterprises, and they needed enterprise solutions. There was nothing wrong with their using PCs, of course, but they needed to be connected, and they needed work-group management and collaboration solutions.” 

After leading that charge, Church spent a year as the territory executive for greater China. Then, in 2003, Malcolm Walter eyed him for a completely different role: “I tapped George to run our professional services organization, which had never made money.” That realm had long been treated as an extension of technical support and fixing product flaws. It was a “money-losing hobby,” in Church’s estimation, getting in the way of a revenue opportunity. 

Florence Zheng joined in 2005 and was named Chief Talent Officer in 2015

“The accounts wanted to buy services in most cases, like training,” Church said, “because they wanted to reduce their risk of failure. So it wasn’t that we didn’t have a market. It was a matter of getting some focus.” Working out of Boston and taking advantage of Bentley’s new industry-focused orientation, which “made it easier to bring experts in,” he slowly but steadily built an organization and implemented pricing conventions to turn it around. 

“He did a wonderful job of putting systems in place so that we could actually be running a real services organization, with goals for increasing billable ratios and so forth,” Walter said. “We kept incrementally getting better and better until it was nice and profitable.”

In the fall of 2012, when that transformation was complete, Greg beckoned Church to Exton to spearhead yet another initiative, around the concept of “user success.” This was essentially a recommitment to Bentley’s user-centric ethos in an era of increasingly sophisticated and specialized software. “The user was never in the room with us” when developers and product managers were making technical decisions, Church observed, “so we tended to forget about them.”

While preparing to move into the new role, Church plunked down $30 at IKEA to buy an item that became a four-legged icon of his mission. It was a bright red chair—and Church’s constant conference-room companion. “When you brought a red chair into a meeting,” he explained, “people sort of focused on that.” Drawn up to a table, unoccupied, “it came to represent and symbolize the user perspective.”

The original red chair struck enough of a chord that by and by Church bulk-ordered a miniature version from a Chinese manufacturer of dollhouse furniture. Bestowed upon Bentley colleagues, these teensy trophies “became a theme,” he recollected.

How do you recognize people for focusing on the user?” he asked. “Not just on what’s good for Bentley, but what’s good for the user? Because that’s what makes Bentley successful.

Of all the ways Bentley tried to fortify its user-centric orientation in the 2000s, there was no contest for the most popular. Launched in 2004 as the “BE Awards of Excellence” and eventually evolving into the “Going Digital Awards,” it became known colloquially as the “Oscars of Infrastructure.”

Greg traced the idea’s genesis to an unbearably awkward keynote address some years earlier during which, inexplicably to him, the marketing team had arranged for a live lion to materialize on the stage while he spoke. Reciting his lines in a state of cognitive dissonance, he couldn’t help but put himself in his listeners’ shoes. Why was there a lion next to him? What did it have to do with engineering? “I rolled my eyes throughout the whole thing,” he recalled. His audience hadn’t traveled from all corners to goggle at mammalian predators. “People don’t want to see a CEO who’s not sure why there’s a lion being lowered down with him. They come to compare notes. They want to talk about, you know, engineering projects.”

The BE Awards served to “honor the extraordinary work of Bentley software users and their role in improving the world.” In its first year, it attracted 135 nominations, spanning architecture and engineering services firms and owner-operators including cities, DOTs, and government departments. Submissions in 21 categories across Building, Civil, Geospatial, and Plant appeared in a special 100-page supplement of Bentley’s be magazine (be was an acronym for “Bentley Empowered”), and winners were announced at a black-tie gala in Philadelphia.

Many of the projects highlighted the tangible, quantifiable benefits of using Bentley’s digital tools. The 2004 winner in Extreme Mapping, for instance, went to Toronto’s use of MicroStation GeoGraphics to create a 3D topographic map encompassing 427,392 building outlines, 132,893 catch basins, 187,805 streetlights, and 36,852 fire hydrants. The project, which also categorized the public and private ownership of over 1.1 million trees, cost approximately $4 million but had saved the city an estimated $7 million. In 2005, Honduras collected an award in the Government category by using MicroStation GeoGraphics to reform its land registry system in a way that reduced the time required to perform zoning analyses from 3 days to 15 minutes.

The technical detail and sophistication grew each year. Over time advancements moved well beyond 2D CAD to encompass 3D and 4D modeling, building information modeling (BIM), energy-efficient “green” building, structural engineering, and even contemplated “digital environments” integrating the design and construction phases of complex projects. In 2008, Bentley marketers celebrated architects, engineers, planners, and owner- operators at the vanguard of the “global movement to provide society with pollution- free renewable energy, clean water, efficient transportation, and sustainable buildings” by introducing two new categories: “Sustaining Our Society” and “Sustaining Our Environment.”

The inaugural prize in the former category went to Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran for a project whose name said it all: “Transforming Intermittent Water Supply of Developing Countries to 24x7 System.” It used Bentley’s WaterGEMS software to design a hydraulic model of proposed pipelines providing potable water to 140,000 inhabitants of Badlapur, India. CH2M Hill won the latter category for the “Round Butte Dam Selective Water Withdrawal” project located on Billy Chinook Lake in Oregon, which involved a complicated and innovative design to satisfy regulatory requirements to prevent native fish from entering intakes. The design team developed a 3D model using MicroStation to visualize the design as it progressed, drive engineering data, and coordinate and construct components.

A 2009 winner for Innovation in Structural Engineering no doubt delighted tennis aficionados including Greg and Gabe Norona: it went to Edge Structures’ retractable roof and redevelopment of Wimbledon’s Centre Court, which was carried out with MicroStation. In 2011, an expansion of the Panama Canal using Bentley’s MXROAD (later rebranded OpenRoads Designer) earned the Belgium-based Jan De Nul Group an award for Innovation in Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering.

Over the years, award-winners leveraged MicroStation V8, MicroStation TriForma, InRoads, GEOPAK, ProjectWise, and other software packages to carry out extraordinary projects, ranging from the National Swimming Center for the 2008 Beijing Olympics to the Channel Tunnel Rail Link between France and the U.K. Yet the Oscars of Infrastructure may have meant the most to designers of workaday infrastructure assets that function best by attracting the least attention—sewers that don’t flood, traffic that doesn’t jam, lights that don’t flicker in foul weather. Where else could the otherwise anonymous engineers responsible for these social goods gather in tuxedos and evening gowns to punch the air in triumph as their names were called in front of their most accomplished peers?

“It was amazing,” marveled Harry Vitelli, who joined Bentley as VP of product management for MicroStation and ProjectWise in 2007. “You’d have some 30-year-old kids with civil engineering degrees, living in Kansas City, and they get an award and go up on stage in front of 1,000 people—because they’re working on a CAD program to developa new highway interchange or something.”

It was “the pinnacle of how Bentley connected with its users,” he said, “but also of how Bentley showed how proud it was to be part of this industry.”

Giving back to the communities where we live and work has always been an important value at Bentley Systems. Beginning with local programs serving Chester County, PA, where we established our corporate headquarters in 1987, the scope of our philanthropic endeavors today has become truly global, helping many people in many countries gain access to water, sanitation, and energy.

Bentley has long supported organizations that are aligned with our purpose to advance the world’s infrastructure for better quality of life, including Engineers Without Borders, Habitat for Humanity, The Hunger Project, and Water for People. In 2023, Bentley announced a new multi-year funding commitment to Engineers Without Borders to help accelerate progress toward a sustainable and equitable future for all. Engineers Without Borders, a “global movement of engineering change agents,” is changing lives daily by delivering critical infrastructure to communities in need and supporting people in crisis. Together, we are reimagining the future of infrastructure by nurturing new engineering solutions and inspiring a compassionate engineering community. There are more than 60 national and regional Engineers Without Borders chapters around the world. That represents a huge opportunity to find new ways to deal with critical infrastructure challenges and make a collective impact.

In Jatun Pampa, Bolivia, a rural area dependent on farming, an old footbridge had become dangerously outdated, leaving hundreds of residents without a safe way to cross a local river. Students with the University of Delaware chapter of Engineers Without Borders teamed up with students from other universities and Engineers in Action to build a new bridge for the residents of this small farming community. The team traveled to Bolivia to construct the bridge, building anchors on either side of the crevasse using masonry and concrete, then hoisting cables and laying decking. Students not only got hands-on experience in their field, but also explored a new culture, playing soccer with local children, working shoulder-to-shoulder with residents to build the bridge, and experiencing a different way of life.

Students with the University of Delaware chapter of Engineers Without Borders, sponsored by Bentley, helping build a bridge

In addition to values-driven corporate giving, Bentley is a committed advocate for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education to raise the next generation of engineers. Since 2008, Bentley has invited colleagues to earmark a grant from the company to a cause of the colleague’s choosing in support of STEM education. Grants have been made to schools, nonprofits, and nongovernmental organizations in more than 30 countries to provide laptops and iPads, computer labs and libraries, robotics kits and programs, and buildings, solar panels, and classroom supplies for rural schools. From Haiti to Honduras, Ireland to India, Madagascar to Mexico, Pakistan to Poland, the United Kingdom to the United States, this work has made a difference to countless students.

Bentley has also been an enthusiastic supporter of Future City, an international STEM competition for middle-school students. For nearly three decades, Bentley colleagues and users have served as Future City coordinators, judges, mentors, speakers, sponsors, and volunteers. Future City starts with a question: how can we make the world a better place? To answer it, middle-school students imagine, research, design, and build cities of the future that showcase their solution to a citywide sustainability challenge. The Future City program has grown to encompass more than 65,000 students annually in the US, Canada, China, Egypt, and Nigeria, and has a special focus on reaching girls, along with other under-represented and under-served students.

Instilling our passion for infrastructure in the next generation is a large part of our education and community engagement efforts. The Bentley Education Program was created in 2021 to help engage the next generation of infrastructure professionals and has since expanded globally. The program’s student and educator entitlements include learning licenses for our most popular applications as well as learning through the Bentley Education portal at no cost.

Greg with winners of the 2014 Future City competition

Bentley colleagues are highly motivated to contribute to a better quality of life for all, passionate about the infrastructure our users create, and believe in the power of connectedness to create a supportive community that brings out the best in everyone. We have chosen to volunteer our time and donate our resources to many nonprofits that support humanitarian causes and disaster relief including the American Red Cross and Project HOPE, a leading global health and humanitarian organization. Bentley has provided 1:1 donation matching and gives every colleague eight hours paid time off each year to volunteer where they want through our Bentley Impact Day.

Bentley has long partnered with United Way to support its efforts to improve the health, education, and economic mobility of communities. United Way seeks to improve lives by mobilizing the caring power of communities around the world to advance the common good. Colleagues in the United States and Canada have the opportunity to donate 1% or more of their compensation to United Way, to unlock an additional Bentley donation to a nonprofit organization of their choosing.

We continue to be passionate about helping the communities where we live and work, in every country where we operate. We are proud of the personal and lifelong impact that Bentley colleagues have on the people and communities around them.

Colleagues in Exton used their 2023 Impact Day at the Chester County Food Bank, next door to the Exton office. They helped process carrots into 2-pound bags to be delivered to help feed people in need. We help combat food insecurity in our community by supporting the Chester County Food Bank and its holistic approach of distributing nutritious foods as well as promoting wellness, education, and gardening initiatives.

Colleagues in Exton Help at the Chester County Food Bank