Bentley: New Officers, Infrastructure Awards, Microsoft Alliance

Among other recent moves, Bentley Systems has appointed Nicholas Cumins as Chief Product Officer (left); Katriona Lord-Levins as Chief Success Officer; and Chris Bradshaw as Chief Marketing Officer.

Bentley Systems, Inc., has hired three new executives for its infrastructure engineering software business and announced the honorees of its Year in Infrastructure 2020 Awards. Also, Bentley and Microsoft Corp. have expanded a strategic alliance focused on “advancing infrastructure for smart city urban planning and smart construction.”

Now on the Bentley staff are:

• Nicholas Cumins, who succeeds Bhupinder Singh, retired, as Chief Product Officer. Cumins will be based in Munich, Germany. He served most recently as General Manager of SAP Marketing Cloud, a marketing automation platform.
• Katriona Lord-Levins, who begins the new role of Chief Success Officer. San Francisco-based Lord-Levins will lead user and enterprise success teams. She spent 20 years at Autodesk, and recently focused on building and leading the construction business unit customer success team.
• Chris Bradshaw, who takes over as Chief Marketing Officer from Carey Mann, now the company’s first Investor Relations Officer. Previously, Bradshaw held the Chief Marketing and Product Officer position at Blue Prism Group, which specializes in robotic process automation. He will be based in Exton, Pa.

In the announcement—following the initial public offering of Bentley stock—CEO Greg Bentley said: “While Bentley Systems accomplished much throughout our 36 years of growth as a privately-held company, and I am proud of our executive talent depth, we obviously could not internally develop public company experience. The principal purpose of our IPO last month was to assure market liquidity for our colleagues, and especially executive shareholders, in advance of many anticipated retirements. In turn, for the executive opportunities accordingly created, our new higher profile as a public company serves to help attract world-class talent from top public technology companies.” 

Year in Infrastructure 2020 Awards

Bentley has announced the recipients of its annual awards program honoring the “extraordinary work of Bentley users advancing design, construction and operations of infrastructure throughout the world.” Sixteen independent jury panels selected 57 finalists from more than 400 nominations that were submitted by more than 330 organizations, spanning 60 countries. 

During its virtual Year in Infrastructure 2020 Conference, Bentley acknowledged 19 Year in Infrastructure 2020 Awards honorees, which included, in the rail and transit category, POWERCHINA Huadong Engineering Corporation Limited, for its “innovative application of digital engineering technology in Shaoxing Rail and Transit Construction” (Shaoxing, Zhejiang, China). It also recognized 14 Special Recognition awardees, which included Network Rail (U.K.) in the “Advancing Virtualization through Digital Twins” category for “overcoming challenges under the COVID-19 lockdown.”

Bentley provides a list of all finalists and winners on its website.

Bentley, Microsoft Grow Alliance

The Bentley-Microsoft Corp. alliance will expand to combine Microsoft’s Azure IoT Digital Twins and Azure Maps with Bentley’s iTwins platform, “enabling engineers, architects, constructors and city planners to work within a comprehensive city-scale digital twin, empowering better decision-making, optimizing operational efficiency, reducing costs and improving collaboration.” The two companies will collaborate to develop new smart city solutions, and explore opportunities for digital twins in urban planning and citizen engagement for cities around the world, Bentley says.

“At Bentley, we believe that infrastructure digital twins can empower engineers, constructors and owner-operators to design, build and operate infrastructure assets that are more cost-effective, more resilient and more sustainable,” said Bentley Systems CEO Greg Bentley. “With Azure as the foundation of our cloud services, our offerings are more broadly scaled and differentiated by the further integrations of Microsoft technologies. We are excited to extend our partnership to bring new digital twin advances to infrastructure engineering organizations and their constituents.” 

“With Azure IoT, Azure Digital Twins and Bentley’s iTwins platform, the world’s infrastructure—vital to our economies and environment—stands to gain so much by enabling people to create comprehensive digital models of an entire environment,” said Casey McGee, Vice President Partner Development, US One Commercial Partner, Microsoft. “Our expanded strategic alliance with Bentley Systems opens up new opportunities for innovation and will accelerate the benefits of digital twins for infrastructure engineering organizations and, more broadly, society at large.”