The Future Is Green: Rodrigo Fernandes Of Bentley Systems On Their Top Strategies for a Cleaner Planet
An Interview With Wanda Malhotra
Efficiency — Optimizing efficiency is key for doing more with less (and doing it better). We can improve efficiencies to reduce energy, water, or waste footprints, or to increase energy production, or safety and resilience. We can find examples in almost every type of infrastructure. If we look into the specific topic of water distribution, water utilities can leverage intelligent water digital twins to obtain insights that allow them to increase the operational efficiency of their systems. With these data-driven solutions, they can combine hydraulic modeling, sensor data, and AI to automatically detect system anomalies and inefficiencies, which allows them to prioritize maintenance and repair actions to prevent or respond to pipe bursts, leakages, and non-revenue water, as well as water pumps operating below the optimal efficiency point.
As we face an unprecedented environmental crisis, the need for sustainable solutions has never been more urgent. This series seeks to spotlight the innovative minds and passionate advocates who are leading the charge in environmental conservation and sustainable practices. We aim to explore the most effective strategies, breakthrough technologies, and transformative policies that are shaping a more sustainable future for our planet. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Rodrigo Fernandes.
Rodrigo Fernandes is director of ES(D)G (Empowering Sustainable Development Goals) at Bentley Systems, leading the company’s sustainability initiatives. Rodrigo advocates for a culture of sustainability, empowers sustainable development goals through Bentley software and services, and evangelizes Bentley’s environmental handprint. Rodrigo is also European Climate Pact Ambassador and serves as an external expert for the European Commission and the Portuguese Ministry of the Sea (DGPM).
Previously at Bentley, Rodrigo worked as a senior consultant and project manager on the Water Infrastructure Team, and then as business development / environmental industry expert for the Acceleration Team and Digital Cities. He joined Bentley in 2017 with the acquisition of Action Modulers’ Water Business Unit, and before that, he was a Researcher in Marine, Environment & Technology Center (MARETEC), University of Lisbon. He has a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering and has designed and managed over 20 European innovation projects on modeling water resources and environmental safety issues.
Thank you so much for joining us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’?
I work at Bentley Systems, the infrastructure engineering software company, which develops software for designing, building, and operating infrastructure. As Director of ES(D)G — Empowering Sustainable Development Goals, I’m focused on helping the company be the partner of choice for empowering UN SDGs in infrastructure and evangelizing how our users leverage our digital technology to meet global goals by future-proofing infrastructure.
I’m an environmental engineer (BSc, MSc, PhD), based in Portugal, who worked for 15 years in an environmental research center, developing innovative software and building and managing international water quality monitoring and management projects. I then joined a university spinoff company focused on environmental software and consultancy, which was then acquired by Bentley Systems. At Bentley, before my current role, I worked in the Water Infrastructure team; and then in the Acceleration team, focusing on minority investments and M&A for environmental technologies.
Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?
Probably one of the most interesting aspects of my career relates to the time I worked in the research center. During that time, I had a parallel career as a musician, playing in three different bands that were touring across the country and in Europe. Music started as a hobby, but it evolved into a more serious and professional situation with increasing time commitment, where I was doing concerts every single weekend and with several rehearsals at the end of weekdays. While I was having a lot of fun as a musician, combining this life with my professional career as an environmental engineer was becoming too challenging and difficult to manage, personally and professionally. I talked with my manager about this situation, and we agreed I would explore both careers for 6 months to 1 year, and then I would make a decision. In the end, I decided to stop my musical career. I am grateful to my manager for his flexibility during that time because it allowed me to make a more informed decision on my career, and today, I don’t regret it. I love playing music, but once you turn your hobby into a full-time job, it is not always as fun as one might think. The life of a musician also involves several personal sacrifices and effort. This episode allowed me to better appreciate what I do professionally and realize how genuinely grateful I am for the opportunity to consolidate my career in environment and sustainability.
Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
I would say passion, creativity, and pragmatism.
Creativity has been essential to think outside the box and develop innovative ideas for new projects and solutions. This was particularly relevant while working in the research center, where an essential part of our success was measured by the number of innovation projects and funds approved and raised.
Passion is critical to me — it gives me the energy and motivation to keep going and be persistent; it’s also important to communicate new ideas with others and persuade them when there’s still some uncertainty. As a change agent and an “evangelizer” of sustainability empowerment for Bentley Systems, I believe it’s impossible to influence others about our purpose without genuine passion.
Pragmatic — This character trait is essential to set realistic expectations because passion and creativity can quickly drive a person to the “sky”, and we need to keep our feet on the ground. When strategizing and planning for new products, projects, or partnerships, pragmatic approaches enable projects to be executed successfully.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that might help people?
Over the last few years, I’ve been deeply involved in conceptualizing and developing a business solution for enabling embodied carbon analysis as an integral part of Bentley infrastructure digital twins technology, iTwin. Construction materials — in all types of infrastructure — are “hard-to-abate” sectors, and one of the most effective ways of reducing emissions associated with new infrastructure is through efficient design, ensuring carbon is duly quantified and minimized. Our responsibility is to help infrastructure professionals move towards seamless and automated carbon quantification and optimization. We’ve developed a carbon service through the Bentley iTwin Platform, which can be leveraged by any third-party developer or independent software vendor (ISV) who wants to build its own solution or app. But I’m excited we are continuing and consolidating our efforts in this matter.
Last summer, we successfully launched an Early Access Program for embodied carbon analysis in iTwin Experience, allowing users to visualize carbon in 3D within our own web app, with no code needed. It’s exciting to see that many early adopters already apply the new capabilities in real infrastructure projects. Users are excited by the results achieved, claiming a reduction of time involved in carbon reporting for large infrastructure projects from 6 months to 6 minutes. This frees up precious time from designers and sustainability experts, who can now develop more carbon analyses and spend more time in carbon optimization (and less time in mundane tasks such as manually aggregating data or calculating quantities). There’s tremendous potential to do much more in this area in the future, and we are already testing generative AI in this project.
What pivotal moment led you to dedicate your career to sustainability, and how has that shaped your approach to environmental challenges?
While I was a young teenager, I remember reading a book about next-gen professional careers. Environmental engineering and sustainability suddenly became particularly attractive to me since then, mainly because the book explained that a career in that area involves three elements that were really exciting to me. First is purpose — the idea of building a better future for us and future generations. Second is innovation — environmental engineers are directly linked to the development of disruptive new tools, technologies, and approaches to solve sustainability issues. Third is the fact that sustainability is inherently multi-disciplinary, generalist, and horizontal. I always struggled to identify a single discipline for my career; thus, sustainability seemed the right choice. I’ve always found a career in sustainability to be the perfect place to keep me motivated and passionate, constantly embracing new, innovative, exciting projects and being able to navigate through different disciplines.
Since then, I have understood the recognized value of corporate sustainability generalists and the unique skillset required to look at everything with a sustainability lens, and weave it into business strategy, innovation, and leading cultural change. It’s essential companies don’t look to sustainability as a siloed objective. It must be embedded in every aspect and decision for corporate businesses — from purpose to strategy and operations — and not just as a “do-good, feel-good” thing. Companies embracing this purpose-driven mindset will be the ones that will be more prepared to thrive in the future, attracting more top talent and funding, reducing their risks and uncertainties (such as climate-related risks), and being more competitive.
Could you describe a groundbreaking project or initiative you’ve been involved in that significantly contributed to sustainability?
I referenced iTwin-enabled embodied carbon analysis, which is in progress and there’s tremendous potential of bringing a significant positive contribution to decarbonize the infrastructure sector.
In the past, I was also proud to have been directly involved in the development of an open-source predictive model for oil spill fate and behavior in coastal areas, which has been widely applied in response to real spill incidents (e.g. Prestige, in Galicia, Spain), but also as an integral part of pollution emergency preparedness and response systems at national and local (seaport) levels. The model has also been extensively used worldwide in academic contexts — by students, researchers, and innovators for applied research and development working in environmental pollution and risk assessment projects.
How do you navigate the balance between economic growth and environmental preservation in your sustainability strategies?
Economic growth and environmental preservation can go hand-in-hand, as innovation and responsible practices unlock sustainable solutions that benefit the economy and the planet. As mentioned above, companies integrating sustainability at the core of their corporate strategy will be the ones that will be more capable of reducing inefficiencies, risks, and uncertainties (such as energy consumption, climate change consequences, supply chain dependencies, or regulatory frameworks), increasing talent retention, and attracting more investments and customers.
What emerging technologies or innovations do you believe hold the most promise for advancing sustainability and why?
From a “quick wins” perspective — i.e., achieving results today with existing technologies — I genuinely think that intelligent digital twins are one of the most efficient and effective ways of applying sustainability and emission-abatement levers, such as efficiency and circularity, moving toward better infrastructure and making it more sustainable, safer, and climate-resilient.
From a longer-term perspective, I’m really optimistic regarding fusion energy, a clean and potentially limitless power source, which has seen exciting developments and milestones recently, although it still faces challenges before becoming commercially viable. Researchers and organizations leading initiatives like the ITER mega-project are optimizing every single step linked to fusion power generation to ensure that once technology becomes commercially viable, fusion power plants can be rapidly deployed in record time. The field is experiencing significant momentum, making fusion energy a more realistic prospect than ever before. While challenges remain, the recent progress fuels optimism for its potential to contribute to a clean and sustainable energy future.
Based on your research or experience, can you please share your “5 Top Strategies for a Cleaner Planet”?
I’ll give examples from an infrastructure perspective:
Efficiency — Optimizing efficiency is key for doing more with less (and doing it better). We can improve efficiencies to reduce energy, water, or waste footprints, or to increase energy production, or safety and resilience. We can find examples in almost every type of infrastructure. If we look into the specific topic of water distribution, water utilities can leverage intelligent water digital twins to obtain insights that allow them to increase the operational efficiency of their systems. With these data-driven solutions, they can combine hydraulic modeling, sensor data, and AI to automatically detect system anomalies and inefficiencies, which allows them to prioritize maintenance and repair actions to prevent or respond to pipe bursts, leakages, and non-revenue water, as well as water pumps operating below the optimal efficiency point.
Circularity — Circularity is the most sought-after concept for a sustainable future. Many organizations already incorporate innovative circular principles in their infrastructure projects. In a circular economy, also known as circularity, we avoid producing waste and consuming resources in the first place, maximize efficiency, circulate resources, and regenerate nature. The application of the concept extends the lifespan of products, materials, resources, and infrastructure. For instance, when building rail infrastructure, the excavation of materials can be optimized by combining digital data management and advanced geotechnical applications to reuse materials and minimize waste, as well as reducing the carbon emissions produced by mass haul vehicles.
Diversifying renewables — Transitioning to low-carbon energy sources is critical to ensuring universal access to sustainable and affordable electricity. More than 50% of the carbon that needs to be cut over the next decade will come from decarbonizing industrial and energy systems. The reality is one in 10 people still lack access to electricity. As demand grows, the most effective way to future-proof infrastructure is to pursue quick wins by leveraging existing, low-cost, mature technologies. Diversifying energy sources is key: renewable energy production must accelerate by combining all renewable sources to generate enough low-carbon energy to power our world. One good example is geothermal energy, which can complement other low-carbon energy sources. Geothermal doesn’t use much land, it doesn’t produce emissions, and it can complement wind and solar power. Geothermal energy can be generated virtually everywhere, based on geothermal heat pumps, for heating, cooling, and domestic water. This is being used in Paris district heating, for instance. If we could capture just 0.1% of the Earth’s heat content, we could supply humanity’s total energy needs for 2 million years.
Public and active transportation modes — While the world is already making significant steps in switching to electric, low-emission, fuel-efficient vehicles, cities can inevitably not rely exclusively on individual cars — even if they are fully electrified — to future-proof their transportation systems. The supply chain for manufacturing electric vehicles (EVs) and their batteries faces complex challenges. The electrical grid still needs to be fully decarbonized. And cities are becoming more populated and more congested. As a result, many cities are transforming themselves to create sustainable and just alternatives to cars and adopt “15-minute city” principles. These cities are investing in public and/or active transportation options. They encourage people to walk, bike, and use public transportation whenever possible. They embolden urban planners to move toward multimodal transportation to create more sustainable, livable, and inclusive cities. To accelerate results and reach these goals, mobility planners and departments of transportation are leveraging advanced digital software, such as mobility simulation, to generate what-if scenarios, facilitate more informed decisions, and produce better efficiency and effectiveness in these modes of transportation.
Water conservation and climate resilience — Climate change is water change. It disrupts weather patterns, leading to extreme weather events, floods, unpredictable water availability, water scarcity, and contaminated water supplies. These impacts can drastically affect both the quantity and the quality of water that people need to thrive or survive. These challenges, combined with aging infrastructure and increased populations, create additional difficulties to ensure water and food security worldwide. The solution is to implement better and more holistic water cycle management, adopt circular principles to reuse water and wastewater, and intelligently map, monitor, inspect, and manage all water and its associated infrastructure, from source to tap. Digital twins are becoming the norm for supporting all these principles.
A good example is being followed in the US at New Bullards Bar Dam. This infrastructure asset provides flood control, 340 megawatts of clean energy, and a reliable water supply for residents and the ecosystem. The dam operator combined IoT, 3D reality modeling, and artificial intelligence, enabling survey teams to monitor the dam remotely, automatically detect tiny but growing cracks, and establish real-time, automated monitoring of the dam’s structural integrity. The dam operator can immediately assess the dam during extreme weather events and after earthquakes to prevent disasters.
In your view, what are the key steps individuals, communities, and governments need to take to achieve a more sustainable future?
My general advice would be to start right now, pragmatically adopting a strategy of quick wins or “low-hanging fruits,” and prioritizing the most impactful emission reduction levers, such as efficiency, circularity, recycling, and renewables. Digital solutions can undoubtedly support this strategy.
We should be conscious of how our actions impact the Earth and do our best to reduce that impact. “Our best” will look different for everyone — individuals, communities, and governments. Achieving net-zero emissions today is virtually impossible, however, each of us can and should find our own purpose and roadmap. While continuously making all viable efforts and actions to reduce our environmental footprint, we should also adopt a handprint approach and move toward true net positive where we can give more than take.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I believe democratizing access to knowledge and education would probably be the most impactful. We see a critical gap in terms of sustainability skills, but also around STEM. We will struggle to build a better and equitable future for everyone without the human capacity and awareness to drive change.
Therefore, I would start a movement to promote a world where everyone can access quality education and essential information, regardless of background or location. This movement could focus on expanding internet access, developing low-cost educational resources (e.g., focused on environmental issues and the importance of sustainable living), and promoting lifelong learning opportunities.
What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?
My Linkedin!
In case you are also interested in knowing more information about sustainability empowerment stories from Bentley Systems, you can check this website: https://www.bentley.com/esdg/
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.
About the Interviewer: Wanda Malhotra is a wellness entrepreneur, lifestyle journalist, and the CEO of Crunchy Mama Box, a mission-driven platform promoting conscious living. CMB empowers individuals with educational resources and vetted products to help them make informed choices. Passionate about social causes like environmental preservation and animal welfare, Wanda writes about clean beauty, wellness, nutrition, social impact and sustainability, simplifying wellness with curated resources. Join Wanda and the Crunchy Mama Box community in embracing a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle at CrunchyMamaBox.com .
