By Colleen O’Hanlon
Seequent Chief Executive Graham Grant underscored the criticality of understanding ground risk during a keynote speech at Illuminate 2025 in Sydney, saying the subsurface was ‘high consequences territory’.
Grant told an audience of infrastructure leaders from Australia and New Zealand that building an understanding of the subsurface was difficult, and that more was currently known about the surface of the moon than the world beneath our feet.
Bentley Illuminate is a series of events organised by Bentley Systems which is focussed on advancements in infrastructure technology. These events bring together industry leaders, experts, and stakeholders to discuss innovative strategies and cutting-edge technologies aimed at creating resilient and sustainable infrastructure.
Seequent Chief Executive Graham Grant gave a keynote speech at Illuminate Sydney, Bentley Systems’s premier event for infrastructure leaders from Australia and New Zealand.
Source: Seequent
‘Certainly, we are 100% dependent on the underground,’ Grant said. ‘Everything we eat, consume, that phone in your hand right now…100% of it traces back to the underground.’
Grant recalled a pivotal moment in Switzerland more than a decade ago while observing the construction of the Gotthard Base Tunnel. When asked about the biggest challenge in such a project, a project engineer simply pointed to the rock face and asked, ‘Can you tell me what’s 5 metres beyond that?’
Grant said that single question highlighting the profound uncertainty inherent in underground projects had stayed with him since. Seequent, The Bentley Subsurface Company, was on a mission to bridge this gap by providing continuous and adaptive geological modelling.
Grant emphasised the need for assurance over insurance, advocating for models that evolved with new data, much like updating an insurance policy when a teenager got their first car.
The concept of continually updated modelling, where you begin with something conceptual and progressively add more information, was how we should approach modelling in today’s world, Grant said.
‘That’s what we do. We try to turn that guesswork into certainty. And to do that we need a digital integrated environment, we need a way of bringing things together and closing the gaps.
‘We are advancing fast on the idea of a digital ecosystem of the underground. ‘
The concept of ‘continuous modelling’ ensured that project teams were always working with the most accurate and current geological data.
Seequent’s technological innovation had established them as world leaders in geotechnical analysis and geological modelling and its software is used by ten out of ten of the world’s largest civil engineering design firms. With a team of 800 professionals operating in 145 countries, Seequent supports more than 7400 customers in many industries, helping them manage their precious subsurface resources.