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From Drone Scans to Digital Twins: Bentley Accelerator Awards $250,000 to Startups Using 3D Tech for Infrastructure 

Bentley Systems has awarded four innovative startups up to $250,000 as part of its annual accelerator program, including a Las Vegas firm that transforms drone scans into explorable 3D environments and an Amsterdam-based startup that creates photoreal CGI visuals for online businesses. iTwin Activate is a program that fosters collaboration between Bentley, the infrastructure engineering software company, and early-stage startups in the industry. The 2025 program is focused on companies that use 3D geospatial data to improve infrastructure such as roads, railways, bridges, water networks, and the electric grid. This year’s selected companies work in a wide array of fields, including e-commerce, construction design, railway and highway maintenance, and urban asset management. “The intent of the program is to support our objective of growing an ecosystem of folks building on our platform technology,” says James Kress, director of digital acceleration for iTwin Ventures at Bentley Systems, who runs the program. During the four-month program, each startup will build a project on Cesium and 3D Tiles, an open standard created by Cesium.  (Bentley acquired Cesium in 2024.) They’ll be supported by technical experts, gaining additional industry and market insights from Bentley’s product leaders. Participants will also receive funding of up to $250,000 each

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Bridging The Infrastructure Talent Gap: This Digital Twin Contest Serves as a Training Ground for Future Engineers 

Jona Schubert has always been fascinated by how things work. As a child in the small South American country of Suriname, he says he “kept asking too many questions and loved figuring things out.”   When Schubert was 8 years old, his father gave him an especially exciting toy: a remote-controlled car. “I just tore it  apart to look at what was inside, what drove it, what makes the wheels move, and how I was able to remotely control it,” he says. “Then I tried to put it back together. Needless to say, that wasn’t successful! But that moment has stuck with me since then.”  That drive to find out how things work – and to discover ways to make them work better – has taken the geoscience graduate on quite a journey. After graduating in 2021, Schubert worked as a geoscientist and mine engineer in the rainforests of his native Suriname. A post-graduate course in energy and power systems management at the U.K.’s University of Portsmouth followed. Then last October, Schubert took the stage in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, as a finalist in a prestigious international competition where students use digital twins – realistic and dynamic digital models of a physical

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Tech That Matters: Turning Data Into Smarter, Safer and More Resilient Cities that Work for Everyone

What makes a city smart? For Luke Antoniou, senior editor at SmartCitiesWorld, it’s using data and technology to improve how people live, work, and move through urban spaces. We caught up with Antoniou in Dublin in May at the first Urban Tech Challenge, where he served as a judge. The event was organized by Bentley Systems, the global infrastructure engineering software company and brought together students, academics, and technologists to improve urban infrastructure planning. We talked with Antoniou about how cities address complex challenges like flooding, mobility, and emergency services and how they’re using digital twins, AI, and open data to get smarter and move faster. Antoniou was quick to point out that real change doesn’t happen in isolation. It takes collaboration between planners, technologists, policymakers, residents and other stakeholders. The key, he says, is usability: cities already have vast amounts of data, but unless urban solutions and platforms are intuitive and accessible to everyone, from engineers to frontline city staff, that data goes to waste. In our conversation, Antoniou explained what success looks like and why cities must think people-first to be truly smart. Tomas Kellner: What is SmartCitiesWorld? Actually, let’s start at the beginning: What is a smart

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Ideas, Impact, and AI: 7 Leaders Shaping the Future of Infrastructure

Infrastructure is made of steel and concrete, but its future is being built in code. A new wave of engineers, scientists, and visionaries is using artificial intelligence (AI), open data, and curiosity to solve problems that once seemed too hard to crack — from cutting carbon to predicting floods to using digital twins to design cities. Take a look: High Wire Act: From Jokes to Marathons, Bentley’s AI Guru Delivers Under Pressure Karl-Alexandre Jahjah is going the distance to drive Bentley Systems’ AI breakthroughs and push the boundaries of infrastructure engineering. The avid marathoner brings a competitive, goal-oriented mindset to his role as director of applied AI — along with a curious, creative perspective and collaborative leadership approach honed through more than a dozen years on Quebec’s improv comedy circuit.. The former physics researcher leads a Bentley team building the next generation of infrastructure tools, including the generative AI-powered OpenSite+ infrastructure design software. “People are still skeptical about what AI can actually deliver,” Jahjahsays. “That’s why it matters that we get it right.” Emily Zhang, Associate Software Engineer at Bentley Systems How the ‘City of Bridges’ Inspired a Rising Engineer’s Career. She’s now Bringing Generative AI to Infrastructure Emily Zhang’s

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This Engineer Gave AI a Job: It Learns the Software So He Doesn’t Have To

At the 2025 Bentley Illuminate conference in Atlanta, one presentation turned many heads. Kyle Rosenmeyer, a model-based design leader at the engineering firm VHB and a Bentley software superuser, talked about a simple but powerful use of generative AI in the form of Microsoft’s Copilot Studio. He used the platform to build a custom AI agent that helps engineers take advantage of Bentley engineering software’s powerful features—fast. I wanted to learn more, so I caught up with Rosenmeyer during a wide-ranging conversation about point clouds, generative AI, and the future of design work. Join us in the conversation below: Tomas Kellner: Hi Kyle, thank you for joining me, especially right after a dentist appointment. Kyle Rosenmeyer: Yeah, happy to be here. It was a pretty high-tech experience actually. They scanned my tooth using photogrammetry. It’s basically the same principle we use to build point clouds in infrastructure work, just at a way smaller scale. TK: That’s wild. So instead of laser scanning a road, they’re scanning your molar. KR: Exactly. And it reminded me how a single core technology—like point clouds—can show up everywhere, from digital twins of bridges to dental crowns. Anyway, it got me thinking about how much

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The Joy of Not Knowing: Inside One Professor’s Quest To Rethink Engineering for the Age of AI and Open Data

Tomas Ward isn’t your typical computer science professor. A self-described “noob,” Ward heads up data analytics at the School of Computing at Dublin City University and serves as site director of Insight, one of Ireland’s largest AI research centers. But it’s not titles that drive him—it’s tinkering. Ward is a champion of curiosity, experimentation, and joyful failure. Whether organizing maker festivals or encouraging students to dive headfirst into hands-on urban tech challenges, Ward sees data and technology as tools for collective experimentation and progress. To him, a smart city isn’t just a city that uses data; it’s one where citizens shape their environment through access, openness, and play. We caught up with Ward in June during the first Urban Tech Challenge organized at DCU by Bentley System, the global infrastructure engineering software company. The hackathon brought together students, academics, and technologists to find solutions to real urban problems. We talked about how he teaches, how he learns, what he wants every student to take away, and why open data is critical to smart city innovation. Bentley: Why are events like the Urban Tech Challenge important for students, for DCU, and for Dublin? Tomas Ward: I’m a big fan of the

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Turning Points: Inside the Eureka Moments and Game-Changing Insights that are Rewriting the Rules Infrastructure

Infrastructure isn’t quick to evolve. Its sheer scale, cost, and complexity can make change painfully slow. But every so often, a person, an idea, or a tool cuts through – shifting how people see, plan, or act. Sometimes it’s a light bulb moment; other times, it’s a slow burn that catches fire. This is a collection of those turning points from across the Bentley Systems ecosystem – stories where possibility triumphed over inertia, and digital technology became a catalyst for change. 1. EchoWater’s $400 Million Saving What changed? Digital twins proved their worth in billion-dollar public works. The moment: Stakeholders on the billion-dollar upgrade to California’s EchoWater wastewater treatment facility weren’t convinced that modeling the construction process digitally would help them deliver the project on schedule and avoid cost overruns. So Jeff Campbell and Serelle Corn, the married co-founders of Project Controls Cubed, used Bentley’s SYNCHRO software to create a 4D animation of the project, on their own time and dime. During their presentation and just 30 seconds into their video, the stakeholders spotted a critical  flaw in the construction sequence that would have cost tens of millions to fix if it had been caught too late. Just like that,

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AI for Earth: How Google and its Partners Use Tech to Predict Disasters, Cut Warming, and Fix Streets

At Google AI for the Planet, an event recently held during London Climate Action Week in the British capital, Google’s global leaders in sustainability came together to explore a pressing question: How can artificial intelligence (AI) help us create a more sustainable, resilient planet? From wildfire prediction and food security to eliminating the aircraft contrails that contribute to global warming, this brisk three-hour event covered a lot of ground and left attendees with a sharpened sense of what’s possible. For the audience of about 200 people, drawn from across academia, nongovernmental organizations, industry, and policymakers, the key message was clear. “No single organization, no single technology, can address challenges of this magnitude,” said Kate Brandt, Google’s chief sustainability officer. “Collaboration is absolutely essential.” A woman in a bright pink suit stands on stage in front of a screen displaying the text “Google AI for the Planet” to an audience. That spirit of collaboration extended to a group of Google partners that were invited to share the stage. Chris Bradshaw, chief sustainability and education officer at Bentley Systems, the infrastructure engineering software company, stepped up to highlight how Bentley’s mobility analytics group, Blyncsy, is partnering with Google Street View to help

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The Engineer Who Saw the Future: Remembering David Settlemyer Who Took a Pay Cut to Follow a Groundbreaking Hunch

David Settlemyer had a distinct knack for making the impossible seem inevitable. Armed with a Southern drawl and an arsenal of folksy colloquialisms — “as useful as socks on a rooster” was a favorite — the Kannapolis, North Carolina native could sell a room of skeptical engineers or investors on a future they’d never dared to imagine. That future included one where artificial intelligence would automate laborious civil site design work—or, as Settlemyer put it, letting “an engineer be an engineer, not a drafter.” That vision turned out to be his life’s work, legacy, and ultimately, parting gift to an industry he was deeply passionate about. Settlemyer, Bentley Systems’ senior product manager for civil engineering, passed away in April from cancer at the age of 54. His baby was OpenSite+, the groundbreaking, AI-powered engineering software that helps civil engineers design land development sites up to 10 times faster than traditional methods and with greater accuracy. “David was a brilliant engineer who, like an artist, could project into the future and envision the value a tool could create while maintaining an understanding of current reality,” says Francois Valois, senior vice president of Open Applications at Bentley Systems. “Usually engineers are very

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Landscape Artists: How HNTB is Using Cesium to Bring Infrastructure Projects to Life

Some engineering marvels were once highly controversial projects. As the Empire State Building grew above Manhattan during the Great Depression, many New Yorkers complained that the iconic Art Deco skyscraper was a waste of money. Throughout the 1990s, security-conscious Brits chafed about the Channel Tunnel, the undersea rail link between the U.K. and France. Even the Eiffel Tower upset Parisian salons, with the writer Guy de Maupassant eating his lunch on the wrought-iron tower to avoid looking at it.    The polarization over major engineering projects could soon be a relic of the past. Firms can now harness cutting-edge technology for their proposals to build stunning visualizations, which help to get communities onside before the laying of a single brick. Kansas City-based infrastructure giant HNTB is now using Cesium, the foundational open platform for creating powerful 3D geospatial applications that is now part of Bentley Systems, to render photorealistic landscapes around their highway, bridge, and interchange designs. HNTB teams are now publishing the sumptuous simulations online and garnering mountains of insightful feedback.   https://youtu.be/zm0Yz2NU4a4 A Community Service Dave Willard, who heads up HNTB’s Immersive Media Solutions unit, explains how interactive media and visualizations are raising the bar on public engagement.

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