Bentley Systems’ Renewed Focus on Sustainability

At Bentley Systems’ recent Year in Infrastructure (YII) event in Singapore from 11th to 12th October, projects that received the Going Digital Awards in Infrastructure were in the limelight. Its goal is twofold: to advance innovation and best practices in engineering, design, construction, operations, and project delivery, and to celebrate the extraordinary work of the organizations that help advance the world’s infrastructure. Three hundred nominations were received from 51 countries. These projects showcased the quantifiable benefits of Bentley’s solutions that included improved processes, productivity, cost savings – and a renewed focus on sustainability. Winners were selected in 12 categories out of 36 finalists. 

Sustainability was the fulcrum of the conversation between Chris Bradshaw, Chief Sustainability Officer, Bentley Systems and Andy Chatha, President and CEO, ARC Advisory Group (juror for the Process and Power Generation category). 

Renewed Focus on Sustainability 

Bentley’s ESG report for 2022 states that the company recognizes its responsibility to lead by example in creating a sustainable future and will continue to work to manage the environmental footprint of its operations and work toward leading business practices for environmental stewardship. The company will continue to drive environmental impact through its product offerings in alignment with leading global efforts for sustainable development.

“For the first time Bentley has appointed a Chief Sustainability Officer, so what are the implications and focus internally and externally?” asked Andy. 

“Sustainability has become top priority for companies today. With 5,000 colleagues and a limited number of offices, the benefits that a Bentley footprint can generate are relatively constrained,” said Chris. Bentley recognizes that to create industrywide change at a global scale, it cannot operate alone. Therefore, Bentley will continue  working with partners, organizations, and communities to support a sustainable future. In this context, Chris spoke about footprint and handprint as defined by a Harvard Professor. While footprint evaluates your activities that contribute to global warming, your handprint evaluates your actions that help reduce climate change beyond your own value chain. 

Two core focus areas of Bentley’s environmental strategy: 

Environmental footprint: Reducing the environmental impacts in its business by improving operations.

Environmental handprint: Empowering UN SDGs by advancing sustainable and resilient infrastructure through the use of Bentley’s products and solutions. 

Sustaining the Entire Infrastructure Sector

Further, Chris spoke about sustaining the entire infrastructure sector through the adoption and use of its software through in-house expertise in maximizing utilization. “When we think about some of the challenges and the resource gap that we talked about, there's not enough engineers to do all the work that needs to be done.” There’s a backlog of projects and there aren’t enough skilled people being hired. Even at the government level/regulatory bodies they don’t have enough people to produce the specs for the funded project. Bentley considers its responsibility lies in attracting more people into the industry and the infrastructure sector as well; it has an important role to play in the intersection of learning and educating (spreading awareness). 

Bentley’s Role

Bentley is expanding the pool of people who work on infrastructure and sustainability. Observation and experience show that young people today care a lot about sustainability and about the future of the planet. There are 8 billion people on the planet and if the infrastructure systems collapse there would be devastating consequences; so Bentley wants to empower and improve infrastructure systems, sustainably. 

What does Sustainability Mean to You? 

• Sustainability as it relates to infrastructure; renewable sources of energy - solar power, wind power etc. 

• Sustainable infrastructure is about resiliency. Infrastructure systems have to be more resilient than in the past because of climate change. 

• Sustaining the industry; bringing people into it, bringing new ideas, bringing fresh ingenuity and so on. 

• If we join forces and collaborate with all stakeholders, the sustainability initiative will be more powerful. 

Further, Chris spoke about the imperativeness of the social impact of sustainability. Today, every organization has to focus on the sustainability aspect and present ESG reports to get funding. Sustainability has moved from being “nice to have, want to have to a must have.” To build a better tomorrow we have to adopt sustainable strategies today.