Page 28 - BENTLEY SYSTEMS PR REPORT - MARCH 2024

We would have people from the front line, in their boots, hard hats, and so forth, come
through. Crossrail didn't want them to go to Crossrail for that because that would just
seem like mandatory training. And we learned not to bring two organizations in at once
because they would try to impress each other. Whereas if they come in on their own,
they're really interested in learning and understanding. It was a lesson in change
management. It helped create trust. And I think it helped make Crossrail successful.

The actual training program was a set of workstations that showed the process that led
to the next workstation with the next process, demonstrating how Crossrail used that
data across its lifecycle. Bentley said this helped everyone understand the importance
of a digital thread linking people like them across the project:

The single distinguishing characteristic of Crossrail as a project from anything we had
worked on before was that they understood that nothing they might do could substitute
for the quality of their data that they got from their supply chain.

Legacy

I asked Bentley what he was proudest of leaving behind in his legacy after forty years.
He told me:

The highlight is the team that succeeds me now because I'm the oldest of the five
brothers, but I am the last to retire. And the standard I've had for myself is to get the
whole succession completed, and then I can retire. As I mentioned, Nicholas and those
who report to him are all in their forties. It's a cadre twenty years younger, which is a big
advantage. The average tenure of a CEO in a public company in the US is five years.
We don't want to look like just any company. What has benefited us is to have continuity
in our management.

We have worked hard to ensure continuity in our products. If you open any file created
by Bentley Systems software over its lifetime going back forty years, you could open
that file today. You would be using completely different software. It's been remade from
the inside out three or four times. But you could go on to renovate that building, bridge,
water treatment plant or whatever. It opens seamlessly. And that level of continuity has
been possible because the Bently brothers have been in charge of who does what on
the technical side all the way along. And we have avoided the temptation for engineers
wanting to start from scratch every time.

It isn't so bad for a building where the project only lasts a couple of years. You couldn't
do it on a Crossrail project. And it's generally not a good idea for infrastructure, which
has to live for generations. It wouldn't have mattered if we had been making software for
games or something like that. However, software for infrastructure has helped meet the
need and hit the spot for us to have this technical continuity for a long time. Now we
have a new generation, and they're young enough to repeat that lengthy continuity.

My take

https://diginomica.com/legacy-built-40-years-trust-learnings-greg-bentley-he-steps-down-ceo-
bentley-systems