One Place to Find Them All: Bentley Infrastructure Cloud Connect Brings Data and People into a Single Environment

At Its Year in Infrastructure Conference, Bentley Systems unveiled a unified environment, AI-powered search, and smarter construction tools in Bentley Infrastructure Cloud. “The work is complex, but the experience doesn’t have to be,” says Bill McNamara, Senior Director of iTwin and Portal Experience.

Thomas Kohnstamm

Bill McNamara has spent more than 20 years in the infrastructure industry, watching paper drawings give way to digital files—only to see those files locked in separate systems, making it hard for those systems to work together.

Now he logs in to one platform and sees the full picture: bridge models across the globe, dashboards pulsing with real-time updates, and the ability to drill into any detail with a click. “Everything is available in one place, supported by federated search across documents, models, and images,” says McNamara, senior director of iTwin and Portal Experience at Bentley. That simplicity—seamless search, smooth interoperability, and a single point of entry—is the vision behind Bentley Infrastructure Cloud Connect.

At the Year in Infrastructure Conference (YII 2025), Bentley Systems introduced Connect, a connected data environment and unified experience for infrastructure professionals interacting with project and asset data. It also unveiled SYNCHRO+, its next-generation construction application, as well as AI enhancements to ProjectWise, both part of Bentley Infrastructure Cloud. Together, these enhancements reflect the company’s belief that data-centric, AI-powered, and collaborative workflows can help organizations improve productivity across the infrastructure lifecycle.

Connected: A unified experience

What makes these advances transformative is the context they deliver. Infrastructure data typically lives everywhere— in models, PDFs, inspection forms, photos, IoT sensors, and more—and it’s rarely connected. Critical information can be lost during handoffs between design, construction, and operations.

Connect overcomes these issues, providing a secure, open, and scalable environment to store and manage infrastructure files and data. Infrastructure engineers and others can view and share this information, capture feedback, and manage deliverables. They can also visualize data in full geospatial context through a web experience powered by Bentley’s Cesium 3D geospatial capabilities.

Bentley software users are paying attention. “Bentley Infrastructure Cloud’s unified environment helps our project stakeholders quickly and clearly understand the impact of design decisions during constructability reviews,” says Andy Kaiyala, vice president of construction technology and controls at the engineering firm WSB. An early adopter, Kaiyala says that “with curated views of 72 projects now accessible to over 900 external stakeholders from 86 organizations, it’s become a key differentiator for us—helping project teams avoid costly missteps and save millions in potential rework.”

ProjectWise AI: Search That Understands

If the unified portal is about connectivity and collaboration, the ProjectWise AI enhancements are about speed. For years, engineers have wasted time trying to find files buried under inconsistent names or hidden in sprawling folder structures. ProjectWise AI-powered search changes that, with search that understands context.

“Historically, ProjectWise search was just a straight keyword match,” says Jason Slocum, director for ProjectWise. “If you misspelled something, you got nothing back.”

The new semantic search recognizes synonyms and intent to deliver results even when filenames don’t line up. Users can type natural queries—the way they’d ask a coworker—and refine their questions in real time using a conversational chat component. Plus, AI-generated summaries surface key details without ever opening the file, speeding up access to critical information.

“We’ve changed it from searching to finding,” Slocum says. “It’s about getting people the answers they need, when they need them.”

The enhancements go beyond AI. A cloud-based rendition service now automates PDF generation at scale, triggered by workflow events, eliminating hours of manual file handling. This means fewer bottlenecks, faster decision-making, and better reuse of past work.

SYNCHRO+: 4D Planning for Everyone

Construction has long struggled with silos between the office and the field, making it difficult to align schedules, models, and day-to-day operations. SYNCHRO+, Bentley’s digital twin and AI-powered construction application, aims to bridge that gap.

“By unifying SYNCHRO 4D Pro and SYNCHRO 4D Modeler into a single, integrated product, SYNCHRO+ simplifies planning and collaboration,” says Morgan. “Its interface and AI-powered features allow not just building information modeling (BIM) managers and schedulers but also non-technical team members to engage directly with 4D planning. That means a site manager can navigate a model, run a simulation, or visualize sequences without needing deep technical training.”

AI makes the process more intuitive by suggesting task mapping, filtering, and model navigation in ways that accelerate planning. Performance upgrades allow teams to work with larger, more complex datasets without the lag that can slow projects down. And because SYNCHRO+ is part of Bentley Infrastructure Cloud, updates flow seamlessly, ensuring that office and field teams stay on the same page.

The implications are broad: less rework, greater visibility, and more inclusive collaboration. By opening 4D planning to the wider project team, Bentley is democratizing a capability that once belonged only to specialists.

Helping people find answers

Bentley’s updates share a common aim: to help infrastructure leaders make better, faster decisions in the face of complexity. Connect reduces friction by giving teams one place to manage, share, and collaborate around data. ProjectWise AI search reduces wasted time and uncovers hidden knowledge. SYNCHRO+ improves collaboration by bringing more voices into the planning process.

As Slocum puts it: “It’s about helping people find answers instantly, so they can actually move projects forward.” McNamara echoes that view: “It’s not about one flashy feature. It’s about bringing these capabilities together so the systems of infrastructure can keep pace with the demands being placed on them. The work is complex, but the experience doesn’t have to be.”