Connecting The Built And Natural Worlds At Bentley YII 2025

At the 2025 Year in Infrastructure (YII) conference in Amsterdam, Bentley Systems (Bentley) showcased how its ongoing investments in digital engineering and infrastructure lifecycle tools aim to address persistent industry challenges around data accessibility, productivity and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Across two days of sessions, demonstrations and the Going Digital Awards ceremony, the firm showcased developments within its expanding Bentley Infrastructure Cloud and Open portfolio, positioning these as enablers of more connected and intelligent infrastructure delivery.

Many of the award presentations served as live case studies of how Bentley’s solutions are being applied in practice. Projects across transportation, energy and water sectors demonstrated measurable outcomes from AI-enabled design optimization, subsurface modelling with Seequent and 4D construction sequencing with SYNCHRO. Alongside this, the announcements of Infrastructure Cloud Connect and the Infrastructure AI Co-Innovation Initiative highlighted a roadmap centred on connecting geospatial, engineering and asset data in one unified environment.

The overarching message at YII 2025 suggested that Bentley is shifting from an engineering software vendor to a data infrastructure provider, enabling contextualized intelligence across the built and natural environment. Strategic product developments and evidence from customer projects underscore how the firm is helping close the engineering capacity gap through automation, integration and trustworthy AI. At the event, Bentley demonstrated:

• Unified intelligence across surface and subsurface systems.

  Bentley highlighted new capabilities across its Open portfolio, extending from GIS and geospatial modelling to advanced subsurface analysis. Cesium introduced enhanced photogrammetry and gaussian splatting rendering for higher-fidelity, AI-powered 3D visualization, while Seequent expanded its capabilities to improve geological modelling and cross-domain data integration. These updates point to a growing emphasis – both at Bentley and across the market – on delivering connected, data-centric workflows across the built and natural environment. For example, Fervo Energy’s Cape Station geothermal development project in Utah uses Oasis montaj, Leapfrog and Seequent Central to create accessible 3D geomodels that de-risk drilling, improve temperature and geological predictions, and streamline planning and financing across distributed exploration teams.

• AI-powered lifecycle connectivity.

  The upcoming launch of SYNCHRO+ marks a major development in Bentley’s digital construction delivery software offering, evolving beyond SYNCHRO 4D to unify cloud-based planning, estimation and 4D visualization within a single AI-powered platform. The update offers AI-driven automation to eliminate time-consuming tasks, a redesigned user interface, immersive 4D visualization, and Copilot integration. A case study shared at the event – Mortenson and McCarthy’s project developing the largest hotel on the US West Coast – leveraged SYNCHRO’s existing 4D planning tools to enable project completion six weeks ahead of schedule. By integrating operational performance data into the design phase, SYNCHRO+ will extend these benefits by closing the feedback loop for continuous improvement and strengthening connectivity across the project life cycle.

• Continued investment and AI innovation for the infrastructure industry.
  With Infrastructure Cloud Connect, Bentley introduced a mechanism for seamless data sharing across all Bentley products – including models, PDFs, inspection forms, photos and IoT sensor data – to support collaboration throughout the entire infrastructure life cycle. As part of this cloud ecosystem, Bentley also announced AI-powered search capabilities in ProjectWise. These new features will allow users to instantly access concise, AI-generated summaries without opening files or switching between applications, streamlining workflows and saving time. Bentley went on to unveil the Infrastructure AI Co-Innovation Initiative, a collaborative programme inviting engineering firms and asset owners to help shape the future of AI-driven infrastructure workflows. PT Kereta Api Indonesia (Persero), winner of the 2025 Going Digital Award in rail and transit, showcased AI’s impact through Bentley’s AI-powered AssetWise Linear Analytics. The solution enabled predictive maintenance across 7,000km of rail, cutting maintenance time by 2 to 4 hours per segment and boosting efficiency by 25 to 40%.

For further insight on the solutions highlighted at Bentley’s YII 2025 – as well as a broader view of offerings available on the market – please read Green Quadrant: Asset Performance Management Solutions 2024 and Green Quadrant: Construction Management Software (CMS) (2025), which benchmark vendor capabilities and innovation trajectories across asset performance and construction management domains. Verdantix is also set to publish Buyer’s Guides on construction management and industrial design and engineering software in the coming months, offering an in-depth analysis of engineering, design and construction software solutions supporting digital transformation across the industrial and built environment.