Greg Bentley and Nicholas Cumins in March 2024 as Cumins is announced because the new Bentley Systems CEO. Offer: Bentley Systems
Bentley Systems, Inc., the Exton, Pa.-primarily primarily based expertise firm on the back of ProjectWise, MicroStation, Synchro and other widely former form and engineering instrument, is transferring by scheme of a generational shift in management as Nicholas Cumins took over as CEO on July 1.
Cumins is the first person no longer in the Bentley household to lead the firm since its founding in 1984. Greg Bentley, who has served as chairman and CEO since 1995, will change into executive chairman of Bentley’s board.
“The executive chair is a goal that is more and more overall in tech firms, for the former CEO, and significantly, cherish a quantity of tech firms are founder and household-led,” Bentley says. “I assassinate in point of fact feel well ready for that goal and I especially feel the culmination factor for me is having done, now, a transition of our executive crew, to a literally new expertise.”
Cumins has been Bentley Systems’ chief operations officer since January 2022. He joined the firm as chief product officer in September 2020 and became once beforehand overall supervisor of SAP’s Advertising and marketing Cloud.
“I in point of fact absorb to assassinate particular we have this engineering ethos, of Bentley Systems as a firm of engineers for engineers, and to assassinate particular that when we have interaction with our customers as peers and as partners,” Cumins says.
Greg Bentley is the eldest of the 5 Bentley brothers who primarily based the firm. Keith, Ray and Barry Bentley all retired over the last few years nonetheless all absorb remained as firm directors. Scott Bentley left the firm in 2002 to stumbled on VideoRay. Greg Bentley choices out that the all members of the manager crew are of their forties and are positioned to lead initiatives into rising applied sciences corresponding to AI-enabled engineering instruments. It has furthermore been a time of alternate for Bentley Systems in a broader sense since it grew to change into a publicly traded firm in 2020.
“We be taught a couple of possibility for customers to rep ever-rising value from their recordsdata, at the side of by scheme of AI. The subsequent four years has in point of fact consuming opportunities, at the side of in AI, so I am reinvigorated by it,” Bentley says. “As an executive chair I will proceed for the foreseeable future to absorb a frequent accountability for investor relatives.”
A Rejected Takeover Order and the Broader Technique
The 5,200-employee firm became once in the news no longer too long in the past when French-primarily primarily based Schneider Electric made publicly announced talks to scheme Bentley. Schneider Electric then dropped the acquisition expose in Might.
“We clearly don’t commentary on merger and acquisition speculation, nonetheless in the future of the historical previous of Bentley, we have been inviting in conversations for transformative alternate choices to urge our vision to furthermore create value for our shareholders,” Cumins says. “This particular opportunity took place to build up some press, there became once an announcement that became once issued by Schneider, so we had to practice swimsuit, nonetheless it with out a doubt’s a nothing-to-be taught about-here hassle, as a scheme to focus on. There became once a dialog and that dialog has ended.”
Cumins says that the firm will proceed to focal point on the instruments that relieve engineers form and assassinate public works and infrastructure.
“It’s the majority of the replace and or no longer it’s increasing very solid,” Cumins explains. “There would possibly perchance be not any cause on the back of us to shrink back from that core market. And there is a quantity of funding occurring. We have got got very solid relationships, now we absorb solid product capabilities in transportation, yes, nonetheless furthermore water, utilities, electric utilities. If we gape at investments in the U.S. with IIJA, or no longer it’s primarily transportation, nonetheless we inaugurate to peer some funding going into the flexibility grid, too.”
Cumins stresses that there are no longer ample engineers to carry out the work required to assassinate on the present time’s world sustainability targets, no longer to claim the concerns of increasing older infrastructure.
Engineering firms and the proprietor-operators of infrastructure property are searching for to instrument cherish Bentley’s to relieve them overcome the talent shortage, he says.
“Infrastructure is at a watershed second. No topic the massive capital funding in infrastructure tasks and jobs post pandemic, so important more remains to be completed to assassinate infrastructure more resilient. Our ability to bridge that gap will literally resolve the quality of lifestyles for generations to near back.”
ENR Associate Expertise, Instruments and Merchandise Editor Jeff Yoders has been writing about form and building enhancements for twenty years. He is a 5-time Jesse H. Neal award winner and 2 ASBPE winner for his tech coverage. Jeff beforehand wrote about building expertise for Structural Engineer, CE News and Building Invent + Construction. He furthermore wrote about provides prices, building procurement and estimation for MetalMiner.com. He lives in Chicago, the birthplace of the skyscraper, where the tempo of innovation never leaves him with out a yarn to accelerate.
