Building Institutional Memory: Connecting Infrastructure Design And Operations
As water utilities face unprecedented challenges driven by climate change and the need for adaptive planning, the traditional separation between capital design work and ongoing operational performance is rapidly becoming unsustainable. During Bentley’s Year in Infrastructure 2025, which took place in Amsterdam on October 14 through 16, Water Online sat down with Richard Vestner, Bentley’s VP for Cities and Water, to discuss how connected digital tools are breaking down these barriers, creating institutional memory, and fundamentally changing how infrastructure is designed and maintained.
Vestner explained that the shift begins with adopting digital tools and ensuring absolute connectivity. “You need people to press on the button, to say, ‘Yes, I want to use this product. Yes, I want to have the Co-pilot helping me’,” he explained.
In particular, Vestner emphasized the word connectivity, noting that by using digital tools alone, companies can speed up a lot of processes. This connectivity is often achieved through platforms like Bentley’s iTwin, which acts as a data container where every product contributes to a layered data structure. “All of a sudden you get the information that you need by pulling it through the connecting APIs or interfaces, so you have everything in one place instead of manually moving it from app one to app two.”
Accelerating The Design Phase
A primary benefit of leveraging connected digital tools is the massive reduction in planning and design cycle times. While current planning cycles often stretch from five to ten years, tools that enable adaptive planning are helping to shrink those windows significantly. Vestner pointed out that many project finalists reported between 15% and 30% shorter design times, resulting in immense cost reductions through manpower savings.
Similarly, AI has been a key factor in augmenting engineering capabilities during this early phase across an increasing number of projects. Still, Vestner and other Bentley executives repeatedly emphasized that AI is designed to help engineers, not replace them. This augmentation comes from tools like the Bentley Co-pilot, which functions as an add-on to make products "AI ready."
The Co-pilot helps by running in the background, making suggestions, and finding relevant data — a process that is usually highly tedious. “Not only does this make the process much faster, but the engineer will also probably have much more fun at work, believe it or not, because they are spending less time just searching for the right file somewhere in a registry.”
Tearing Down The Walls Of Silos
The greatest challenge in building institutional memory, Vestner noted, is the traditional hand-off problem: the designer completes the project and hands it off to the utility, often without a formal mechanism for feedback on operational performance. Even more so, engineering companies want to expand their services into the operational phase because they know how important that knowledge is for making better planning and design decisions.
Bentley iTwin single-layer data container can facilitate this continuous feedback loop. That said, the utility may face internal challenges, such as outdated or inconsistent data, including handwritten notes, ancient file formats, or even knowledge that "lives in someone's head". For the most part, however, this data can be digitized (e.g., scanning 2D plans to create 3D models), a process that helps eliminate costly rework and enables the platform to analyze vast amounts of data that might otherwise delay projects.
The Need For Lifecycle Thinking
For the industry to truly benefit from the digital thread that connects design to operations, a mandatory shift in mindset and process is required. Vestner concluded that both service companies and utilities must embrace a lifecycle mindset, challenging organizations to change their procurement and RFPs to demand that information be shared throughout the project's lifespan. He noted that if the client (utility) doesn't change its request for proposal (RFP) to respect and demand the provision of this lifecycle information, it will remain difficult to achieve the desired integration. Ultimately, while technology is available to support connecting design and operations, success hinges on both the approach and the willingness of stakeholders to change their processes.
Christian Bonawandt is an industrial content writer for Water Online. He has been writing about B2B technology and industrial processes for 24 years.