Real Assets
We build future energy systems and resilient infrastructure, backing emerging opportunities in technology, land and water.
Infrastructure has always been designed with permanence in mind. Railways, bridges, water networks and industrial assets are built to outlast economic cycles, political shifts and even the assumptions of the people who first designed them. But permanence no longer means what it once did. In a world shaped by climate pressure, tighter resource constraints and faster technological change, it is no longer enough to build for longevity alone. Infrastructure must last, adapt and avoid carrying unnecessary carbon through its life.
For generations, permanence in the built environment was expressed through conservative design assumptions: more concrete, deeper frames, and wider allowances. When failure is catastrophic, such conservatism is understandable. But it left a carbon legacy. What once looked prudent can now read as overdesign: excess material, oversized systems and operational assumptions that continue emitting long after construction ends.
The scale of the challenge is difficult to ignore. Long lived assets lock in decisions for decades, sometimes longer. Infrastructure is associated with 79% of global greenhouse gas emissions[i] and 88% of adaptation costsi. Construction alone accounts for 50% of all extracted raw materialsi, 33% of water consumptioni and 37% of global CO2 emissionsi. Once these decisions are built into physical infrastructure, they are costly and time consuming to undo. A poor design decision can shape emissions profiles for a generation.
At the same time, the industry faces a growing shortage of experienced civil engineers. An ageing workforce, limited graduate supply and rising demand for infrastructure renewal have all tightened capacity. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the civil engineering job market will grow 5% faster than most other fields between 2024 and 2034[ii], yet the market still faces a net shortage of 18,000[iii] engineers annually. That structural imbalance increases the value of tools that help engineers work with greater precision and less waste.
That is where Bentley Systems, a new WHEB holding, becomes particularly relevant, given its role in shaping both the carbon intensity of infrastructure and the productivity of scarce engineering talent.
Bentley Systems develops software used across the lifecycle of infrastructure assets, spanning design, modelling, simulation, project delivery and asset management. Used well, those tools can reduce overengineering, improve coordination before construction begins and support better decisions once an asset is in operation. Bentley’s Carbon Analysis capability offers a useful illustration. Highlighted in the company’s 2024 Impact Report[iv], it brings embodied carbon assessment into the design stage, when the choice of materials are still being determined. Bentley says that work which once required months of specialised labour can now be done in minutes of compute time.
Bentley’s digital twin platform, iTwin, illustrates the broader direction of travel. By combining engineering models with operational data and sensor inputs, digital twins allow infrastructure owners to visualise and monitor assets in real time with greater accuracy and can pre-empt maintenance requirements. Over time, that supports a shift from reactive intervention towards predictive management. As artificial intelligence becomes more capable in design assistance, inspection, data analysis and maintenance planning, platforms that can organise and interpret complex infrastructure data are likely to become more useful, refining and improving designs based on real world feedback.
From a stock perspective, the software sell off in early 2026 reflected concerns that artificial intelligence could erode the economics of large parts of the sector. In some areas, that may prove true. Yet the sell off treated the sector as though all software businesses face the same risks. Bentley looks different. Its products are embedded in specialist engineering workflows shaped by technical standards, regulatory requirements and decades long asset lives. That makes them harder to replace, and arguably more valuable, in an environment where engineering teams are under pressure to do more with less.
That does not make the story risk free. Adoption across infrastructure can be slow, particularly where procurement cycles are long and operating cultures remain conservative. Bentley’s software also forms only one part of a much larger chain of actors that ultimately determines how infrastructure is financed, designed and managed. Even so, the company occupies an attractive position within some of the most durable investment themes of the coming decades: infrastructure renewal, grid investment, water efficiency and resilience.
What makes Bentley interesting is the role it plays in shaping the quality of decisions that sit behind infrastructure assets long before they’re built. If emissions and costs are locked in early, the precision of software used at that stage matters more than it first appears.
The future of ‘permanence’ will not be defined by building more than necessary, but by building smarter.
