Bentley Systems, Inc., a global provider of infrastructure lifecycle software, today announced it has acquired Haestad Methods, Inc., an international provider of water resources solutions.
John Haestad has been appointed senior vice president of Bentley Software. "We heartily welcome John and his entrepreneurial team, which will become integral parts of our product and operations groups," said Bentley CEO Greg Bentley. The Haestad Methods responsibilities within Bentley will very soon be expanded at a new 54,000-square-foot headquarters facility in Watertown, Connecticut.
Haestad solutions provide for design, analysis, and management of water distribution supply, municipal sanitary sewers, urban stormwater collection, roadway and civil site drainage and flood control. These products are used by municipalities, transportation agencies, consulting engineers and contracting firms.
Bentley executives anticipate expanded international adoption of the Haestad Methods product line as a result of Bentley's extensive global operations.
"From its founding by John Haestad 25 years ago, Haestad Methods has been an amazing success story," said Greg Bentley. "As most experts and practitioners in hydrology and related fields know, Haestad Methods has literally written the book for applying information technology in water systems. Along the way, its profitable growth to more than 100 colleagues and over $16 million in annual revenues has been consistent and entirely self-financed."
"I've met the Bentley team and studied their technology portfolio. The opportunities here are astounding," said John Haestad, president and CEO of Haestad Methods. "The Bentley vision and direction are irresistibly compelling, and will forever elevate the way that civil engineers produce and collaborate. This is an ideal match of culture and technology."
As water quality has become a critical issue worldwide, water quality engineering is now a significant growth area in AEC (architecture, engineering and construction).
According to infrastructure industry management consultant Alan Farkas of Farkas Berkowitz & Company, the growth rate of water quality engineering has increased about 10 percent per year on a compounded basis for the past six years.
"Water quality engineering has been and should continue to be the most attractive engineering market segment in the U.S.," noted Alan Farkas. "With this acquisition, Bentley positions itself with a broad-based software offering to water-quality engineers."
In serving this market, Bentley and the Haestad team will continue to upgrade and extend Haestad's products and move to integrate them more directly into the AEC lifecycle spanning design, construction and operations. These plans include supporting Haestad Methods functionality on Bentley's MicroStation, the standard design platform for 47 of the 50 state departments of transportation; connecting to Bentley ProjectWise, the company's collaboration servers; and remaining committed to users' choice of platforms.
Haestad solutions run as standalone applications as well on the AutoCAD and ESRI platforms. Existing Bentley support for these platforms includes MX, from its acquisition of Infrasoft, and AutoPLANT, from Rebis, running on AutoCAD; MicroStation V8 native support of the Autodesk DWG format as well as Bentley's DGN format; and the Bentley Connector for ArcGIS software supporting workflows spanning AEC and GIS environments.
Source: Haestad Methods
