Specialist infrastructure engineering software company Bentley Systems, Incorporated has unveiled new infrastructure AI capabilities at the company’s Year in Infrastructure conference in Amsterdam. Bentley also announced an Infrastructure AI co-innovation initiative, inviting engineering firms and asset owners to collaborate on the next generation of AI workflows.
“AI is poised to transform infrastructure,” said Bentley CEO Nicholas Cumins. “At Bentley, our vision is for AI to empower infrastructure engineers—not replace them. Trustworthy AI, built on infrastructure context, can improve engineering productivity and transform workflows across project and asset lifecycles.”
AI use expanding across infrastructure
Each year, Bentley honours leading infrastructure organizations with the Going Digital Awards, recognizing excellence in project delivery and asset performance through digital innovation. This year, nearly one-third of award submissions—and almost half of finalists—incorporated AI into their projects.
This aligns with the findings from a global survey of infrastructure professionals released at the conference. Conducted by Bentley in collaboration with law firm Pinsent Masons, engineering firm Mott MacDonald, and consultancy Turner & Townsend, the survey found that about half of respondents are either piloting AI or have already implemented it, with plans to scale its use across their organizations. Key focus areas include boosting design and engineering productivity and automating documentation processes.
“The greatest challenge to delivering better and more resilient infrastructure is engineering capacity,” said Cumins. “The reality is, there simply aren’t enough engineers in the world to do all the work that needs to be done. AI promises a step change in productivity that can help close this capacity gap.”
AI rolled out across Bentley product portfolio
At last year’s conference, Bentley introduced OpenSite+ for civil site design, the first in a series of new AI-powered applications. This year, Bentley unveiled additional next generation applications for substation design and construction management that accelerate the adoption of AI across project delivery.
“We have been creating a new generation of infrastructure applications built on digital twins, powered by AI, and fully connected to Bentley Infrastructure Cloud,” said Francois Valois, senior vice president, Bentley Open Applications. “They show what’s possible when AI is built for real infrastructure workflows and tailored to the needs of engineers.”
Featuring Bentley Copilot, a context-aware AI assistant that guides users through workflows, surfaces relevant documents, and can make changes to models, the new generation of data-centric applications include:
Infrastructure AI co-innovation initiative
“For more than 40 years, we’ve helped infrastructure professionals and organizations become more productive through our software,” Cumins said. “We welcome the creative ways our users are already combining our applications with AI—and we believe this is just the beginning.”
To navigate this change together with users, Bentley announced the Infrastructure AI Co-Innovation Initiative to collaborate with engineering firms and asset owners on the next generation of AI-enhanced workflows. The co-innovation initiative, open to Bentley users, will examine how Bentley APIs can evolve to better support AI use cases and explore new commercial models that reflect the evolving balance between AI-driven and human-driven work.
“This is a pivotal moment,” Cumins said. “The opportunity to shape the future of infrastructure is in front of us—and we’re incredibly excited to collaborate with our users in this new way.”
Pictured: Bentley’s OpenSite+, the first engineering application leveraging generative AI for civil site design, is now in limited availability. It delivers projects up to 10 times faster without sacrificing accuracy. Image courtesy of Bentley Systems