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Inside the Race to Build—and Power—the World’s Largest Data Centers 

You know that something extraordinary is happening on the outskirts of Abilene, in the Big Country part of Texas, even before you arrive. By 6 a.m., a line of cars stretches a mile from the highway to where thousands of workers are building one of the biggest data center sites in the world.   Preston Williams of DPR Construction, the project’s general contractor, is part of the team building the Abilene data center. Its size is staggering. One of the largest such centers in the U.S., and possibly the world, the site will span 4 million square feet, roughly 70 football fields, and include eight buildings that will each house up to 50,000 Nvidia artificial intelligence (AI) chips. The center’s power needs will approach 1.2 gigawatts, rivalling the output of a nuclear plant. The center will be part of the $500 billion Stargate program that will provide the massive infrastructure needed to power the boom in AI. “It really is a place to test how to plan a job correctly, because you have to have some way to organize the madness,” Williams says.  Williams sat down with the Bentley Horizons podcast to talk about the massive project, in an episode that’s all

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Hacking the Future of Construction: Powered by AI, Bentley’s Next Generation Synchro+ Software Redefines 4D Modeling

Everything is bigger in Texas, including the data centers that power artificial intelligence (AI). One of the largest such centers in the U.S., and possibly the world, is now under construction in the West Texas city of Abilene—and the numbers are staggering. The site will span 4 million square feet, roughly 70 football fields, and include eight buildings that will each house up to 50,000 Nvidia AI chips. The center’s power needs will approach 1.2 gigawatts, rivaling the output of a nuclear plant.  The facility is part of the $500 billion Stargate Project, a massive initiative involving OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, Microsoft, Nvidia, and other AI giants. Once complete, the Abilene datacenter will help form the backbone of AI infrastructure in the U.S. in the years ahead.   Sheer size isn’t the only challenge of building the facility. Complexity is just as formidable, says Hannu Lindberg, vice president for construction technology at DPR Construction, the project’s general contractor. “These hyperscale datacenter projects are in high demand. We’re building in more and more remote locations due to cost-effective land and power, and grid capacity to run these massive facilities,” he says. “And we are building them faster than ever to meet the ever-growing

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From Exton to Everywhere: Inside Bentley’s Push to Bring AI to Civil Engineering, Starting with OpenSite+

Late in August, around 60 Bentley Systems engineers, designers, product managers, and experts from around the world gathered at the company’s headquarters in Exton, Pennsylvania, to put the finishing touches on OpenSite+, an engineering software solution that brings generative AI to infrastructure design. OpenSite+ marks a turning point for civil engineering, serving as the first step in Bentley’s broader transformation into the infrastructure AI company. Interviews in Exton this summer with more than a dozen current and former Bentley executives, software and civil engineers, AI and data specialists, product leads, marketing managers—even technical support—highlight just how significant this shift is. The in-person collaboration in Exton—and the diversity of the teams represented—was critical to getting OpenSite+ right, says Bentley Chief Technology Officer Julien Moutte. “When you’re building such a new, groundbreaking product, there’s a huge amount of innovation and collaboration that needs to happen,” he says. “When you’re working on a product that has this very rapid iteration, you need to have people gathering in a room and brainstorming how to address a problem.”

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AI Use in Infrastructure Set to Soar, As Firms Weigh Risks and Returns

Engineers are paid to design roads and bridges. To help them expedite other tasks, Kyle Rosenmeyer, a superuser of Bentley Systems engineering software at VHB, built a custom artificial intelligence (AI) agent using Microsoft’s Copilot Studio. The agent helps engineers answer questions and quickly tap into Bentley software by drawing on Bentley information sources. “These AI agents are only as good as the information they can access,” Rosenmeyer told Bentley Insights this summer. “What I’ve found is that Bentley’s documentation works really well because it’s deep and accessible.” Rosenmeyer is not alone in seeing the benefits of an AI co-worker. Nearly all respondents in a recent survey of the infrastructure sector said they were either trying out or had adopted AI applications for some of their operations – including to improve design and engineering productivity. AI use in the sector is expected to increase, with around a third of the surveyed organizations predicting it would be used in more than half of their design, engineering, and construction projects in three years. Those are among the main findings of a survey by Bentley Systems, law firm Pinsent Masons, and engineering consultancies Mott MacDonald and Turner & Townsend. The survey was published

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

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.  At the upcoming Year in Infrastructure Conference (YII 2025), Bentley Systems is introducing three major advances to that vision. It’s all part of a unified digital experience for users of its Bentley Infrastructure Cloud. The experience includes AI enhancements to ProjectWise and AssetWise software, along with SYNCHRO+, Bentley’s next-generation construction platform. Together, these enhancements reflect the company’s core belief that smarter use of digital twins and AI can help organizations improve productivity, streamline collaboration, and bring the natural and built environments into better alignment.  Bentley software users

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Keeping The Lights On: How AI Can Modernize America’s Aging Grid—Meet Substation+

The American electric grid stands at a critical crossroads. With 70% of existing substations more than 30 years old, utilities face mounting stress from new generation integration, climate challenges, unprecedented growth in power-hungry hyperscale AI data centers, and the electrification of everything from vehicles to heat pumps. “A thriving society requires reliable, safe, and economical access to power, and that’s now threatened by this set of unique challenges,” says Michael Antonishen, director of product development at Bentley Systems, the infrastructure engineering software company. Antonishen has a solution to relieve some of these pressures: It’s called Substation+. Bentley engineers developed this new intelligent solution to modernize how substations are designed, built, and maintained. In a digitized world, substations act as the nervous system of the electrical grid – monitoring, controlling, and protecting the flow of electricity through the system. With Substation+, utilities can use intelligent 3D modeling, AI-enabled design assistance, and collaborative workflows to ensure their aging infrastructure can be improved in time to meet today’s demands. Up to the present day, most traditional substation design has relied heavily on 2D and 3D drawing software—legacy tools that, while functional, keep engineers tethered to traditional linear workflows, which can create bottlenecks, limit

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Step Inside the Future: Bentley Unveils iTwin Engage, Turning Infrastructure Plans into Immersive Experiences

Imagine walking across a bridge before a single beam has been laid—watching the sun reflect off the bridge’s steel, leaning over the railing to take in the river below. With iTwin Engage, it’s possible. Bentley Systems is debuting the new product this week in Amsterdam during the Year in Infrastructure and Going Digital Awards (YII) conference. By using iTwin Engage, projects like bridges, tunnels, and power plants aren’t just drawings on paper or models on a screen—they’re full, real-time immersive experiences. The point isn’t spectacle; it’s communication. iTwin Engage is giving teams and stakeholders a way to see, share, and make decisions with the clarity of standing inside the future they’re building. Visitors will be able to experience iTwin Engage inside Bentley’s popular iLab immersive experience space in Amsterdam. For engineers and architects who live inside CAD files, visualization has long been a necessity. For everyone else, from contractors to community stakeholders, getting an accurate and up-to-date model of a new project destined for their community has often been out of reach. iTwin Engage is designed to solve that problem, making digital twins accessible in real time, on demand, and without the painstaking model optimization that could add days to

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Bentley Unveils AI-Enabled Generation of Open Applications

The infrastructure industry is facing an unprecedented challenge: Demand for new roads, bridges, water systems, and utilities is growing faster than engineers can design and build them. By 2030, nearly 60% of the world’s population will live in urban areas, placing immense pressure on already-strained resources. Meanwhile, floods, wildfires, and other extreme weather events are testing resilience in ways that demand innovative solutions. Bentley Systems’ next generation of Open Applications—starting with the groundbreaking OpenSite+ for civil site design and OpenUtilities Substation+ for electric substations—are purpose-built to address this engineering capacity gap. Plus, they weave artificial intelligence (AI) into the fabric of engineering workflows from the start. “The scope and depth of modeling are getting bigger, and workflows are increasingly more data-centric,” says Ian Rosam, product management director for Bentley’s civil engineering applications. “Efficiency through automation underpins everything we’re doing across our open applications.” Traditional CAD-based workflows rely on manual, time-consuming processes, particularly in drawing production. This is where AI is transformative. Rather than treating artificial intelligence as an add-on, Bentley has embedded large language models (LLMs) trained on engineering-specific knowledge, like building codes and environmental rules. The result is a fundamental mindset shift in how engineers work. “We are introducing

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Bentley’s Commitment to Data Stewardship in the Age of AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the way infrastructure is designed, built, and operated—and software from Bentley Systems is at the forefront of this change. Our applications help engineers and organizations unlock new levels of productivity, optimize decisions, and tap into the full value of their data. With these opportunities, however, comes a critical responsibility: ensuring that our AI is built on trust, transparency, and respect for our users’ data. For engineers, data is not just information; it’s intellectual property and a strategic asset. At the 2023 Year in Infrastructure (YII) Conference, Bentley emphasized that users retain full access and control over their data stored and managed in Bentley products, including whether and how it’s used for AI training. Our users’ data is their data, always. This principle has guided our approach to developing infrastructure AI capabilities, empowering our users to confidently innovate, knowing their interests are safeguarded. Bentley has adopted robust controls to support the training and development of AI models. Among those controls are two categories of AI models that we designed to respect user preferences and maintain our commitment to data stewardship: Bentley AI Models: We developed these models by using data that has been purchased and/or licensed

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PLAXIS Power Plays: Real-World Projects That Pushed the Limits of Geotechnical Engineering

You don’t thread a metro tunnel under a historic city or build foundations in earthquake zones by guessing what’s beneath your feet. In the world’s most ambitious or unique infrastructure projects, Bentley Systems’ PLAXIS software gives geotechnical teams the insights they need to build smarter. Here are six real-world projects where PLAXIS proved its value.  1. Triple Earthquake Simulation, Fukushima, Japan After the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in Fukushima, one of the region’s rebuilding efforts involved a one-story factory constructed on silty ground. Takeuchi Construction had used a foundation system called the Tender Net Foundation (TNF), a shallow hybrid design combining grid-shaped soil improvement, a concrete slab, and individual footings. The foundation held up, even after the site was hit by an earthquake during construction and two more afterward. But was it because of design or luck? Engineers needed to know. The PLAXIS Effect Engineers typically had difficulty simulating the behavior of silty ground and the settlement behavior of the foundation following consecutive earthquakes. But using a PLAXIS 3D soil model and seismic records from nearby sensors, engineers simulated the TNF’s performance across all three earthquakes. The model not only matched the observed post-quake settlements, it confirmed

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