Interview: Francois Valois, Senior Vice President, Open Applications, Bentley Systems

How do you see open applications reshaping the future of digital infrastructure delivery, particularly in emerging markets like India?
Open applications are set to fundamentally reshape digital infrastructure delivery, particularly in high-growth markets like India. Platforms such as Bentley’s Open suite – OpenFlows, OpenRoads, MicroStation, STAAD and OpenBuildings – already serve as the backbone for engineers and designers, enabling efficient modelling and delivery of complex infrastructure. What is changing now is the infusion of intelligence and accessibility into these tools. With capabilities like Bentley Copilot, productivity is being significantly enhanced by embedding best practices, guidance, and automation directly into workflows. This allows users to focus on design intent rather than software complexity. Engineers can interact more intuitively with applications, defining outcomes while the system translates them into actionable models, enriched by project specific and regulatory context. Generative design is another major shift, enabling the analysis of thousands of design alternatives to identify optimal solutions based on terrain, constraints, and sustainability parameters. At the same time, automation of manual tasks such as drawing production is driving substantial efficiency gains. For a country like India, where infrastructure development is accelerating rapidly, these advancements are critical. Open, AI-enabled applications enable faster delivery, better collaboration, and more informed decision-making – ultimately supporting the creation of scalable, resilient, and future-ready infrastructure ecosystems.

India is scaling infrastructure at an unprecedented pace. Where do you see the biggest gaps today that open applications can realistically solve – design coordination, execution, or asset lifecycle management?
India’s infrastructure push is creating opportunities across the value chain, but the most critical gaps today lie in design productivity and, more importantly, data continuity across the lifecycle. On the design side, open applications can significantly enhance efficiency by automating routine tasks and enabling AI-driven ideation. This allows engineers to focus more on creativity, optimisation, and higher-value decision-making, ultimately improving productivity without increasing resources. However, the larger challenge remains the disconnect between design, construction, and operations. Despite advances in 3D modelling, much of the industry still relies on 2D deliverables, leading to a loss of valuable data and often forcing contractors to recreate models from scratch. This is not just a technology issue, but also a policy and process gap. To truly scale infrastructure delivery – especially in the context of India’s long term vision – there is a need to move towards seamless data integration across the lifecycle. This includes wider adoption of 3D models, digital twins, and as-built data as standard requirements. Bridging this gap will require not only technological adoption but also shifts in policy, industry practices, and stakeholder mindset.

As digital twins become central to infrastructure management, how do open applications from Bentley Systems improve their scalability and usability for asset owners and EPC contractors, while enabling better decision making and predictive maintenance beyond visualisation?
Bentley’s open applications are inherently digital twin–centric, designed to move beyond static workflows towards connected, data-driven environments. Our next-generation “plus” applications are digital twin–native – operating on cloud connected databases rather than files – ensuring that data is always live, accessible, and up to date across the asset lifecycle. This approach significantly improves scalability and usability for both asset owners and EPC contractors, enabling seamless collaboration across design, construction, and operations. By maintaining a continuous data loop, it eliminates information loss and ensures that insights generated at one stage can be leveraged throughout the lifecycle. In addition, the integration of AI and advanced analytics enhances decision-making beyond visualisation. Tools like STAAD, now increasingly cloud-enabled, allow users to run large-scale simulations and analyses more efficiently, supporting better planning, risk mitigation, and predictive maintenance. Ultimately, by combining openness, cloud connectivity, and intelligence, these applications enable digital twins to evolve from visual models into dynamic, decision-support systems that drive performance and long-term asset value.

In India, what are the biggest barriers to adopting open digital solutions in infrastructure projects – technology limitations, legacy systems, or organisational mindset – and how can stakeholders overcome them?
In India, the barriers to adopting open digital solutions are a combination of technology, processes, and organisational mindset – but the biggest challenges today lie in people and process rather than technology. Technology is advancing rapidly, especially with AI, and many of the traditional limitations are being addressed. The real gap is in how effectively organisations utilise these tools. In many cases, users are leveraging only a fraction of the available capabilities. With AI-enabled assistants like Copilot, this gap can be reduced by making software more intuitive and accessible, enabling wider adoption across teams. Process and policy constraints are equally critical. The industry still relies heavily on 2D deliverables, limiting the adoption of data-rich 3D models and digital twins. For meaningful transformation, stakeholders – including asset owners and regulators – need to mandate the use of models, enable their approval and sharing, and integrate them across design, construction, and operations. In construction, adoption of advanced workflows such as 4D and 5D planning has been limited due to complexity and cost. However, with AI simplifying tasks like linking schedules to 3D models, these capabilities can become more accessible, even for smaller projects. Ultimately, overcoming these barriers requires a coordinated shift – upskilling people, modernising processes, and aligning policy frameworks – to fully unlock the potential of open digital solutions at scale.

In an era of AI and automation, how is Bentley integrating intelligent workflows into its open applications portfolio to improve decision-making and project efficiency?
Bentley is embedding AI-driven intelligence across its open applications portfolio to create more intuitive, efficient, and decision-centric workflows. A key component is Bentley Copilot, which operates at multiple levels – helping users understand software capabilities, query and interpret models, and even make design modifications through natural interactions. Beyond this, Copilot can ingest and index large volumes of project data, such as detailed reports and specifications, using engineering-aware AI models. By leveraging techniques like retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), the system contextualises information within specific engineering domains – whether roadway, water, or structural – ensuring more accurate and relevant insights for users. This significantly enhances decision-making by allowing engineers to access, interpret, and act on project data more effectively. In parallel, generative AI capabilities enable rapid exploration of design alternatives, helping identify optimal solutions while reducing manual effort. Ultimately, by automating routine tasks and embedding intelligence into workflows, Bentley’s open applications allow engineers to focus on innovation and high-value decision-making, improving both project efficiency and overall outcomes.

India is witnessing rapid infrastructure expansion across roads, railways, and urban development. How are Bentley’s open applications tailored to address the unique execution challenges and scale of Indian projects?
Bentley’s open applications are purpose-built to handle the scale, complexity, and execution challenges of large infrastructure projects – making them highly relevant to India’s rapid expansion across roads, railways, and urban development. A key differentiator for Bentley is our deep experience in delivering solutions for some of the world’s largest and most complex projects around the world. This global expertise has enabled us to develop highly scalable, robust tools that can effectively manage large datasets, multi-disciplinary coordination, and distributed project teams – core requirements for Indian megaprojects. Our applications create a connected data environment, or a “single source of truth,” enabling seamless integration across design, construction, and project management. This supports advanced capabilities such as 4D and 5D planning, faster approvals, and improved collaboration, all of which are critical in accelerating project delivery. For instance, in large-scale infrastructure projects like coastal* highways and long-span bridges, our solutions enable better construction sequencing, efficient tracking of precast components, and optimisation of time and material usage. Ultimately, Bentley’s open applications are tailored to India’s needs by combining global best practices with scalable, data-driven workflows – helping stakeholders deliver complex infrastructure projects faster, more efficiently, and with greater confidence.

Collaboration between multiple stakeholders remains a key bottleneck in large EPC projects. How can open standards and APIs transform coordination between designers, contractors, and operators?
Open standards and interoperability are fundamental to Bentley’s approach, and they are critical to improving collaboration across stakeholders in large EPC projects. By embracing openness – through technologies like iTwin, which has been made open source – we enable all participants in the ecosystem to access and build on shared data. This ensures that project information remains usable and relevant over the long lifecycle of infrastructure assets, particularly during operations and maintenance. Our acquisition of Cesium further strengthens this capability by enabling seamless publishing and sharing of large-scale 3D geospatial data on the web using widely adopted standards. When combined with iTwin, this creates a powerful, open digital environment where designers, contractors, and operators can work from a common, continuously updated data foundation. A key advantage is lifecycle continuity. Bentley’s solutions connect design, construction, and operations – but just as importantly, they enable feedback from operations back into design. This allows stakeholders to reuse data, make more informed decisions, and improve outcomes in subsequent project phases. Ultimately, open standards and APIs eliminate data silos, enhance transparency, and enable real-time collaboration – transforming coordination across the entire project lifecycle and significantly improving efficiency and decision-making.

Open applications enable seamless data exchange, but also raise concerns around cybersecurity, data ownership, and governance. How is Bentley Systems addressing these risks while preserving the benefits of openness?
Bentley takes cybersecurity, data ownership, and governance extremely seriously, recognising that trust is critical to the adoption of open applications. We follow rigorous global security standards across both data and application layers, supported by dedicated application security (AppSec) teams. These teams actively test and strengthen our systems through continuous “attacker–defender” simulations, alongside regular audits by independent external organisations to ensure compliance with the highest benchmarks. In addition, all our software development processes are aligned with strict security protocols, with developers trained to embed security by design. We also collaborate closely with leading cloud providers like Microsoft and Google to leverage secure, scalable infrastructure. Importantly, while enabling openness and seamless data exchange, Bentley ensures that data ownership remains with the client, supported by robust governance controls and secure access frameworks. This approach allows us to preserve the benefits of open ecosystems -collaboration and interoperability – while maintaining the highest levels of security and trust.

How do you envision the role of open applications in advancing sustainability, resilience, and lifecycle performance of infrastructure assets?
Open applications play a critical role in advancing sustainability, resilience, and lifecycle performance by embedding data-driven insights directly into infrastructure workflows. Within Bentley Infrastructure Cloud, for example, carbon footprint analysis is integrated at a foundational level. This enables engineers to assess embodied carbon — aligned with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) standards – early in the design phase, allowing them to compare materials and design options and make more sustainable choices from the outset. Beyond this, open and connected applications ensure that data flows seamlessly across the asset lifecycle, improving long-term performance and resilience. By linking design, construction, and operations, they enable better monitoring, predictive maintenance, and more informed decision-making over time. Importantly, by automating routine tasks and improving efficiency, these tools free up time for engineers and stakeholders to focus more on sustainability outcomes. As asset owners increasingly demand greener, more resilient infrastructure, open applications provide the transparency and intelligence needed to meet those expectations. Ultimately, they shift sustainability from a compliance exercise to a core design and operational priority.