On the second morning of the Bentley Tech Summit in Berlin, Marina Savenkova looked around a crowded conference room and paused.
“I totally can say one Bentley,” said Savenkova, an Ireland-based senior application engineer at Bentley Systems. “Yeah, one Bentley with colleagues and with users.”
It wasn’t a slogan. It was an observation. All around her were engineers, product managers, solution specialists, and Bentley software users from across the world, clustered together in small groups. Laptops open, diagrams sketched, notes scribbled. Workflows adjusted on the fly. Problems that normally move slowly through organizational channels were quickly being discussed—and often resolved—in real time.
The scene captured the essence of the summit, also known as BTS25. The three-day event wasn’t designed as a product showcase or series of presentations, but rather as a working environment—one where learning, teaching, and alignment happened together across roles and disciplines. “It’s almost like lightning in a bottle,” said Volaree Rendon, Bentley’s director of solutions engineering. “You have this hive mind.”
Colleagues discuss ideas and solutions during a session at the Bentley Tech Summit 2025.That collaborative atmosphere was intentional. More than 500 Bentley colleagues and users came to Berlin in December to do the hard work of understanding how infrastructure is designed, built, and operated today—and where friction still exists. The summit was a defining moment for how Bentley learns, builds, and partners with users of its technology.
The summit included hands-on, workshop-driven collaboration designed to “break walls” between disciplines, workflows, and tools. The goal was to turn insight into value in real infrastructure contexts.
“Coming together to have those conversations puts us in the right position to understand [our users’] challenges, understand the workflows and opportunities that they need to address, and then how we best service them,” said Brock Ballard, Bentley’s chief revenue officer. “I think that’s really an important element of what we’re doing, which is how do we collaborate and align to support and service the users and accounts that we interact with every day.”
Sessions were structured around workflows, not products. Users brought live project contexts, and Bentley teams listened, tested assumptions, and adapted in real time. Another unique element was that the summit brought together not only Bentley colleagues from around the world, but also users from other companies and organizations.
Colleagues and users participate in a training session during BTS25.“Our customers are not only attending the event, but they’re also actually providing enablement to our internal colleagues,” said Andy Rahden, vice president of solution engineering and services. “So this starts to build more of a community, because people can share best practices about how they’re utilizing Bentley technology.”
Bentley’s Kierstin Arthur designed the curriculum and sees BTS25 as a turning point. “Showing our products working together end to end, and linking that to real industry solutions, is something we’ve never attempted before at this scale,” says Arthur, the company’s senior technical enablement manager. Her aim is to pull back the curtains on silos to ensure Bentley colleagues and users are aligned. “It is a wonderful learning opportunity,” she says.
With each workshop featuring hundreds of years of collective knowledge, you could almost hear the walls and silos come crashing down. Industry leaders helped design and guide the sessions, but the focus throughout the event remained the same: value for users. “We want to be partners. We want to be collaborators,” said Laura Hill, Bentley’s chief of staff for solutions engineering. “We want to be strategic parts of the growth of our user base, and the way to do that was to really understand the challenges our users are experiencing—and position the right solutions around that.”
The summit also helped sharpen how Bentley communicates value, said Brad Johnson, director of electric utilities at Bentley. “It was an excellent opportunity to upskill our ability to communicate what Bentley does in a meaningful, relatable way,” he said. “Anytime we can help relate what Bentley does to solving global challenges, I’m always a yes.”
That emphasis on outcomes—not tools—surfaced repeatedly during the summit. Matt Sheridan, Bentley’s senior director of solutions engineering, framed the company’s direction as a shift from selling products to delivering value. “If we can all think about the value we deliver with these products, and target that value together, we will be unstoppable,” Sheridan said during a Bentley Talks conversation recorded at the summit.
Bentley’s long-term vision was also front and center. Chief Technology Officer Julien Moutte used the summit to explain where the company is headed—and why. “We want the boundaries to disappear,” Moutte said. “Between the desktop and the cloud. Between humans and AI. And to bring all the insights we have about infrastructure into the hands of engineers so they can do their best work.”
That vision resonated with users who traveled to Berlin. Ross Brown, technical director at the engineering and consulting firm Beca, said the conversations reinforced his confidence in Bentley’s direction. “It was really exciting to see where Bentley is going with the software,” Brown said. After Moutte’s keynote, he put it more simply: “Inspirational. I like where it’s going—and I’m glad I’m on the journey.”
Summit feedback made it clear that users valued the deeper level of engagement. Industry participants like Barritt Lovelace of Collins Engineering noted that Bentley’s willingness to adapt software based on feedback—making tools more practical in real workflows—sets it apart. Several users stressed that their relationships with Bentley are defined not just by technology, but by the partnership ethos that events like BTS25 amplify.
Brock Ballard, Bentley’s chief revenue officer (left) and Andy Rahden, VP, Solution Engineering & Services take the stage at BTS25 to discuss the company’s journey.That sense of shared journey may be the summit’s most important outcome. BTS25 wasn’t about announcements, but rather alignment—among teams, tools, and Bentley and its users. The summit showed what happens when learning replaces pitching, when collaboration replaces silos, and when value is defined by real-world outcomes rather than features.
The Berlin summit made one thing clear: When Bentley collaborates with its users, progress accelerates—and trust follows. Says Ballard: “The best thing is the noise that you hear when people are together. They’re communicating. They’re talking about their story. They’re sharing experiences. I think the highest value here is the ability to share and grow together.”
Bonus: The summit also featured interactive elements like a 3D tour of Berlin built with Cesium, underscoring how digital twin technology and immersive visualization are becoming strategic story mediums as well as engineering tools. These creative experiences supplemented the technical dialogue with visual demonstrations of infrastructure complexity and connection.
