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Engineering the Future: Training the Next Generation with Some of the Most Complex Infrastructure on Earth and maybe Mars

Louisiana is no stranger to devastating storms and floods, but you’d never know it every February when New Orleans erupts in Mardi Gras, a festival of sound and color flavored with boisterous parades, jazz, and spicy crawfish boils. Locals know that beyond the beads and feathers and brass band music sits some of the most complex infrastructure on the planet, from levees and seawalls to canals and spillways, all built to protect the city surrounded by water from flooding. Keeping the system up to date is an urgent task. The latest initiative to do so is the brainchild of James Scott Fargason, a business professor at Louisiana State University, and his former student, Russell J. “Joey” Coco Jr., now an acclaimed infrastructure engineer and executive. The duo is leading a revolution to digitize all infrastructure, from single bridges to entire cities, with an eye toward making it “smarter” and more resilient. Their vehicle is Digi-Twin Global, a company they started in Baton Rouge, home to LSU, to advance digital twin technology for infrastructure owners, managers, and operators. “The future of digital twins is going to be what you can do with the huge amount of data that’s out there,” says

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The Civil Engineer’s Co-Pilot: At Nvidia’s “AI Woodstock,” Bentley Executive Lays Out Its Vision for the Future of AI In Infrastructure

Some 25,000 people recently flocked to San Jose, California, for Nvidia’s GTC AI Conference. Informally known as “AI Woodstock,” the event featured Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who talked about the semiconductor giant’s latest AI chips, and AI pioneers and luminaries in artificial intelligence (AI), like Meta’s Yann LeCun, Caltech’s Frances Arnold and Mistral AI’s Arthur Mensch. “It’s essentially the AI conference,” says Francois Valois, vice president for Open Applications at Bentley Systems, the infrastructure engineering software company. “There’s no better forum to talk about AI because everyone working on generative AI is using Nvidia chips.” That includes Bentley, a leader in applying AI to infrastructure engineering. Valois flew to San Jose to speak on a panel addressing the role of AI and data in shaping architecture, civil engineering, construction and infrastructure maintenance. His team developed and launched Bentley’s groundbreaking AI and generative AI products like OpenSite+. This design co-pilot is already helping site civil engineers to reduce the cost and the environmental impact of data centers, industrial facilities and other large construction projects. Joining Valois on the panel, which was hosted by Nvidia, were experts from the design software firms Autodesk, Nemetschek and Trimble. Valois discussed the AI applications that

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Protecting The Big Easy: This Year’s Mardi Gras Showed Again How Infrastructure And Digital Twins Can Help Keep New Orleans Safe and Dry

New Orleans is home to awe-inspiring music, food and street parties. But let’s not forget equally awe-inspiring infrastructure, which keeps the Big Easy dry. That was evident in early March when New Orleans entered “Deep Gras,” the boisterous coda to months of revelry culminating in Fat Tuesday, the end of the Mardi Gras season. Sitting on land near and below sea level and surrounded by water, the party could go on thanks to a ring of levees, floodgates, pump stations, spillways and other infrastructure. Many of these structures were built or reinforced after the catastrophic flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, including the city’s new “Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System,” a 130-mile-long flood wall completed in 2022. Dubbed as the “great wall of New Orleans,” the concrete and steel wall is the largest project in U.S. Army Corps history. “We have the most robust and complex infrastructure here in Louisiana, especially around the city of New Orleans,” says Joey Cocco, president and CEO of the Louisiana engineering firm Forte & Tablada. “The city started in the highest point here, the French Quarter, and it grew out from there. The levees and other infrastructure form a system that

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Fixing America’s Bridges: AI and The Digital Revolution in Infrastructure Design and Maintenance

I traveled to the U.S. in November to meet my team at Bentley Systems headquarters just outside Philadelphia. I am a senior product marketing manager in Europe at Bentley, the infrastructure engineering software company, and I specialize in software for building and maintaining bridges. I am a curious person, so while away from my home in Romania, I decided to explore Philadelphia. I love infrastructure and, naturally, I was drawn to the city’s bridges. Walking around, I couldn’t help but notice the ongoing repair work on aging bridges around the city. One afternoon, as I walked beneath the rusted steel beams of an 80-year-old bridge, I watched a team of inspectors at work. It was fascinating: They hung from safety harnesses, taking photos, writing notes on clipboards, and occasionally tapping spots they deemed suspicious with hammers. It’s the same inspection routine bridge engineers have used for decades. “We’ll be lucky to finish three bridges this week,” said one of the inspectors. “And we’ve got 43 more on our list before winter hits.” This is hard and important work. Across the U.S., over 220,000 bridges desperately need major repairs or full replacement. I chatted with the inspectors about Bentley’s software and

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Smart Heat: A Digital Twin Helps a College Town Move Toward Carbon Neutrality. Are big cities next?

Ithaca is a picturesque town in upstate New York famous for its waterfalls and gorges, and the world-renowned Cornell University. The area has long been hailed as a beacon of progress. Cornell’s students and scientists, for example, helped discover that water once flowed on Mars, built the first fully functioning synthetic human ear, and learned from famed astronomer Carl Sagan. Now, Ithaca and its 32,000 residents have big plans to extend their innovative legacy by leading in urban decarbonization. The city has decided to replace its fossil fuel-burning infrastructure, like boilers and stoves, with electric-powered heat pumps and induction cookers. The work is planned for all of the city’s 5,500 buildings, with the goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2030. The plan is to reach 100% electrification as efficiently and economically as possible—and at the center of the project is a digital twin. The digital urban building energy model was developed by researchers from Cornell’s Environmental System Lab and the Rocky Mountain Institute. Part of the work is sponsored by Bentley Systems, the infrastructure engineering software company and a leader in digital twins and artificial intelligence (AI) for infrastructure. Bentley is also helping share lessons learned from the project with

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Breaking Barriers, Cutting Carbon: The Engineer Helping Infrastructure and Women Reach Net Zero

Many engineers have stories of meetings getting off to a rocky start. For Victoria Fillingham, one began with being mistaken for the coffee server. “I’ve seen a big change,” she says, “but I can tell you stories about being the facilitator of a meeting—bringing all these people together—only for some chaps to walk in, hand me their tea and coffee orders, and expect me to fetch them. I’d say, ‘This is my meeting. The tea and coffee machine is down there. Help yourself. We’ll wait until you’re back and settled.’” That meeting was just one of the hurdles along Fillingham’s long and accomplished engineering journey—one that began with an engineering epiphany in elementary school. That moment led her to a degree in architecture and environmental engineering, followed by a doctorate. Today, she works in the Advisory Services unit of Bentley Systems, the infrastructure engineering software company and a leader in digital twins. She’s also a champion for women pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). On International Women’s Day, March 8, Fillingham emphasizes that more still needs to be done to inspire the next generation of girls to enter science and engineering fields. Inspiring Girls toward STEM  Fillingham

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Choose Your Own Adventure: How Joe Carr Is Helping Bentley Software Developers Unlock AI

If Joe Carr’s life were a Fighting Fantasy book—the well-thumbed Choose Your Own Adventure series that lines his bookshelves—it might begin like this: Before you lies a branching path. Every step a challenge, every choice a puzzle. Do you reason your way forward, code a solution, or invent a new way to play the game? For Carr, a senior software developer at Bentley Systems, this isn’t just a metaphor—it’s how he thinks. From high school math competitions to elite coding challenges, problem-solving is his game, whether in puzzles, algorithms, or real-world infrastructure. In Fighting Fantasy, success depends on three traits: skill, stamina, and luck. Carr’s journey—from cracking complex mathematical puzzles to designing solutions powered by artificial intelligence (AI)—has relied on all of them. The first two earned him a reputation as a formidable problem-solver, but a timely stroke of luck—a chance encounter with Bentley’s chief technology officer, Julien Moutte—gave him the chance to design and lead a company-wide coding and AI contest. Breaking the 100% Barrier Science and engineering were always in the cards for Carr. Born in Ottawa but raised in Mississauga, the Canadian city just west of Toronto, he grew up in a family where problem-solving was second

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Infrastructure in the Agentic Era: How AI and Open Data Are Shaping the Built Environment

I recently had the pleasure and privilege of sharing my thoughts on AI’s role in infrastructure with readers of AEC Magazine. (Martyn, thank you for the invitation!) In the piece, I explain why the massive amount of data generated during design, construction and operations makes our industry—and the infrastructure sector as a whole—ripe for disruption by artificial intelligence (AI). Today, it’s clear that AI isn’t just a trend: It’s a transformative force reshaping the built environment. I want to focus on three key points. First, AI has enormous potential in design to automate repetitive tasks like documentation and annotation, which would allow engineers to focus on higher-value work. This is especially important as the industry. faces mounting project demands while grappling with a shortage of engineers. AI also enables predictive analytics, helping operators detect issues and perform maintenance before failures occur. You’ve likely heard this before: We’re entering the Agentic Era of AI. This transformative chapter will bring systems capable of analyzing digital twins of infrastructure assets—bridges, roads, dams or water networks—to identify issues and recommend preventive action, avoiding costly breakdowns or safety hazards. I go into more depth in my piece for AEC Magazine, which covers the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry.

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5 Thought Leadership Stories From 2024 You Need To Read

In 2024, we turned over the pen — or, rather, the keyboard — to Bentley Systems executives and other insightful voices to tell us about the future of infrastructure engineering. They discussed how AI will change the sector, why we need resilient infrastructure to adapt to climate change, and other pressing topics. Here are five of our favorite discussions: The Future of Infrastructure Engineering is Open Bentley Systems is all-in on keeping data flowing freely in infrastructure. Nicholas Cumins has been championing this “openness” since he became CEO of Bentley, the leading infrastructure engineering software company. “A road, a bridge or a dam might be in operation for 50 years or more, undergoing repairs, upgrades and expansions,” Cumins writes. “By ensuring that our systems remain open, we allow organizations to adopt new technologies and innovations while still being able to access and build on historical data.” Cumins, who was named CEO last summer, notes that openness is not just about connecting different software: “It is about structuring and organizing data so that it can be queried, analyzed and reused across multiple platforms.” For example, many infrastructure assets generate gigabytes of data every day. But only a small fraction—10% or less—is

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How the ‘City of Bridges’ Inspired a Rising Engineer’s Career. She’s now Bringing Generative AI to Infrastructure

With hundreds of bridges crossing valleys, railroads and the three major rivers that meet downtown, Pittsburgh embodies its nickname as the City of Bridges. These bridges are more than infrastructure—they’re proud symbols of connection and community. That pride was on full display when the Andy Warhol Bridge became the centerpiece of Knit the Bridge, a 2013 public art project that blanketed the bridge with nearly 600 knitted and crocheted panels in a colorful tribute to the city’s engineering legacy. For Emily Zhang, who came to Pittsburgh to study computational mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University, the city’s bridges are more than a backdrop. They sparked discussions in her classes and her interest in infrastructure. “For the first time, I started hearing about bridges and transportation systems, and how math could be used for real-world modeling,” she recalls. That shift in perspective set Zhang on the path to explore infrastructure—and the software that designs it—as a career. She’s now working on the sector’s leading edge, developing software powered by generative AI that is changing the game for civil engineers. While Pittsburgh sparked Zhang’s interest in infrastructure, her journey to Bentley Systems, a global leader in infrastructure engineering software, began much earlier and

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