Millions Saved, Risks Cut: Bentley, Seequent Forge Single Digital Platform for Ground and Structure

• 2 November 2025
• Construction Focus
• 1296 Views

Bentley Systems and its subsurface company, Seequent, are pioneering a fully connected digital workflow that integrates deep ground insight with structural engineering. The collaboration aims to eliminate costly silos, enhance design confidence, and significantly reduce project risks and environmental impact.

One of the case studies is the construction of Israel’s tallest building. Part of the “Vertical City” mega-development, the 450-meter tower will be packed with commercial, residential, and hospitality space. Yet the project’s lofty structural ambitions hinged on a much less visible milestone: the performance of the ground.

Geotechnical engineers wanted to learn more about how the ground would behave under immense loading, of 10,000 to 20,000 tons per column. So the project team constructed a 47-meter-long —a kind of reinforced steel cage—and used it to perform a ground-loading test—the first of its kind in Israel. A meticulously orchestrated trio of cranes positioned the sensor-laden barrette, and three powerful jacks applied a total of 6,000 tons of force.

The ground test results and analysis, fed into a geotechnical model in Bentley Systems’ Plaxis 3D software, gave engineers the confidence to reduce the length of foundation elements by up to 8 metslashed concrete used by 10%, reduce the project’s ultimate carbon footprint, and save millions in materials.

This is what happens when deep ground insight and structural design move together. Infrastructure workflows often treat the ground, foundations, and structure as distinct phases or responsibilities, but in reality, they form a single, dynamic system where cause and effect run in every direction.

When those elements are handled in disconnected workflows, critical feedback loops between site data and design can break down—increasing the risk of late-stage surprises. “Unanticipated ground conditions are among the top causes of claims and overruns in the industry,” says Pat McLarin, Seequent’s segment director for civil infrastructure. “The remedy isn’t more siloed thinking, but greater connection.”

Bentley Systems is uniquely positioned to support that shift, moving workflows from disconnected tasks to an end-to-end coordinated process, powered by data flowing between disciplines instead of down a chain. Bentley and Seequent—Bentley’s sub-surface company—are connecting a digital workflow that links trusted ground data, geotechnical analysis, engineering design, construction planning, and operational insights into a single digital thread.

That capability matters more now than ever, as infrastructure faces mounting pressure from urbanization, shifting transport needs, and decades of underinvestment. “The pressure to accelerate delivery is compressing delivery timelines,” McLarin says. “It means you need a tighter interaction between your geotechnical understanding and your structure, because you’re trying to evolve those things concurrently.”

Ground investigation is often seen as a project cost, not the critical insurance policy it truly is, says Carl Grice, who leads geotechnical data management at Seequent. “Having a good understanding of the underground is how you de-risk your project, and that starts with good data,” he says.

Site investigation data—such as boreholes, core photos, field tests, and lab results—needs to be captured, quality-checked, and instantly made available across disciplines. Everyone involved in the design process should be working from the same trusted ground model.

This is where OpenGround comes in. Seequent’s cloud platform for subsurface data management, OpenGround tracks every site test, sample, and lab result, showing exactly which boreholes informed which models and which analyses were run using them. This transparency is essential for collaboration, accountability, and learning—especially on multi-year projects.

But good data doesn’t only come from today’s investigations. The industry is waking up to the untapped value locked in decades of legacy records. “There’s a frenzy of activity across the industry,” Grice says, “to extract information from historic ground investigation reports—sometimes stored in boxes and boxes of paper.”

When done right, the payoff is substantial. For example, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently used OpenGround to centralize its historical ground investigation data from 8,600 sites across the U.S., including boreholes, lab results, and cone penetration testing data. That’s roughly 2.5 million meters of exploration. The Corps now has a half-billion-dollar data asset that will enable future savings from more targeted drilling and data reuse.

Carl Grice“Having a good understanding of the underground is how you de-risk your project, and that starts with good data.”

Historically, ground investigation was a slow, linear sequence: desk study, drill, lab tests, and then weeks or months later, modeling and analysis. Sometimes, critical insights arrived too late to optimize the design. “Even today, some geotechnical engineers are still using a notepad and pen on site, which in the era of cloud computing, I find remarkable,” Grice says.

“Cloud-connected workflows allow us to be truly iterative, rapidly using preliminary lab results to redirect test drilling to target the greatest areas of uncertainty on site,” he says. “This kind of adaptability simply didn’t exist a decade ago.”

That’s the point of the Bentley–Seequent ecosystem: to seamlessly move verified ground data through geological modeling, design, and construction, without the data loss or conservative guesswork that can arise when disciplines work in silos.

• Seequent
• STAAD Pro
• Bentley Systems
• LeapFrog
• Synchro
• Plaxis 3D