"The executive chair is a role that is increasingly common in tech companies, for the former CEO, and especially, like a lot of tech companies are founder and family-led," Bentley says. "I do really feel well prepared for that role and I especially feel the culmination aspect for me is having completed, now, a transition of our executive team, to a literally new generation."

Cumins has been Bentley Systems' chief operations officer since January 2022. He joined the company as chief product officer in September 2020 and was previously general manager of SAP's Marketing Cloud.

"I really want to make sure we preserve this engineering ethos, of Bentley Systems as a company of engineers for engineers, and to make sure that when we engage with our users as peers and as partners," Cumins says.

Greg Bentley is the eldest of the five Bentley brothers who founded the company. Keith, Ray and Barry Bentley all retired over the last few years but all have remained as company directors. Scott Bentley left the company in 2002 to found VideoRay. Greg Bentley points out that the all members of the executive team are in their forties and are positioned to lead initiatives into emerging technologies such as AI-enabled engineering tools. It has also been a time of change for Bentley Systems in a broader sense since it became a publicly traded company in 2020.

"We see an opportunity for users to derive ever-increasing value from their data, including through AI. The next four years has really exciting opportunities, including in AI, so I'm reinvigorated by it," Bentley says. "As an executive chair I'll continue for the foreseeable future to have a regular responsibility for investor relations."

A Rejected Takeover Bid and the Broader Strategy

The 5,200-employee company was in the news recently when French-based Schneider Electric made publicly announced talks to acquire Bentley. Schneider Electric then dropped the acquisition bid in May.  

"We obviously don't comment on merger and acquisition speculation, but throughout the history of Bentley, we've been engaging in conversations for transformative options to accelerate our vision to also create value for our shareholders," Cumins says. "This particular opportunity happened to get some press, there was a press release that was issued by Schneider, so we had to follow suit, but it's a nothing-to-see-here situation, so to speak. There was a conversation and that conversation has ended."

Cumins says that the company will continue to focus on the tools that help engineers design and build public works and infrastructure. 

"It's the majority of the business and it's growing very strong," Cumins explains. "There is no reason for us to shy away from that core market. And there's a lot of investment going on. We have very strong relationships, we have strong product capabilities in transportation, yes, but also water, utilities, electric utilities. If we look at investments in the U.S. with IIJA, it's primarily transportation, but we start to see some funding going into the power grid, too."

Cumins stresses that there are not enough engineers to accomplish the work required to achieve today's global sustainability targets, not to mention the problems of aging infrastructure.

Engineering firms and the owner-operators of infrastructure assets are looking to software like Bentley's to help them overcome the talent shortage, he says.

“Infrastructure is at a watershed moment. Despite the massive capital investment in infrastructure projects and jobs post pandemic, so much more remains to be done to make infrastructure more resilient. Our ability to bridge that gap will literally determine the quality of life for generations to come."