Bentley’s OpenGround Helps Secure America’s Aging Dams

• Proeksa Meas
• 22 April 2026
• Construction Focus
• 1157 Views

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has partnered with Bentley Systems to modernize safety efforts for 740 dams nationwide as average American dam now over 60 years old.

Previously, vital information about the earth and rock beneath these dams was scattered across hundreds of separate databases.

Using OpenGround, a cloud-based platform from Bentley’s subsurface company Seequent, the USACE successfully consolidated 200,000 boreholes of geological data and 8,500 individual projects worth over $500 million.

This move standardized millions of data points that were previously incomplete or missing, creating a single source of truth for engineers.

The digital migration was completed in just 3,000 hours, representing a 95% reduction from the estimated 60,000 hours required for manual entry. This efficiency is already proving vital for public safety.

During a recent emergency involving a life-threatening seepage problem, engineers used the platform to locate critical data within minutes, allowing workers to stabilize the dam immediately.

By reusing historical data, the USACE is also avoiding the high costs and risks associated with redrilling as they work to address a national renovation bill currently estimated at $64 billion.

• Bentley
• Seequent
• Bentley Systems
• OpenGround