Engineering The Future: Does Civil Engineering Have the Courage to Change (Redux)?

We’re being bombarded daily with AI bots and news. Everyone in the profession sees it as a blessing and a curse. I see it as similar to the revolution we saw in the 1980s and 1990s when an engineering office went from large drafting rooms to computer-aided drafting (CAD) first and then computer-aided design and drafting (CADD).

Drafters wore visors and had a large fluorescent light over their large wooden or aluminum drafting table. Drawings were ink on mylar with letters that used a rapidiograph so the lettering was perfect. A mistake meant using an electric eraser, and if you erased a hole in the mylar, the entire sheet had to
be re-inked.

There were a lot of inefficiencies that CAD improved, but there were downsides. First, drawing sets were expensive to produce, so you kept the drawing to a minimum and were efficient with how you presented plans, sections and details. Second, everyone was afraid we would severely downsize the workforce because of our $250,000 Intergraph workstation (in late-1980s dollars, and my office at the time bought two of them at the behest of our clients), but the opposite happened: workforce needs exploded with the new technology as we were able to learn as we developed plans and found ways to optimize
the design.

AI Another Tool

When I speak to various groups around the world, someone always asks about AI and my thoughts on how it will impact our profession. We’re creative problem solvers. I ask those who are project engineers, managers or executives to raise their hand. Then I ask those who had a daily plan for the projects in the morning to lower their hand if there has been one day they achieved all the items in their plan. No hands go down, and that’s the answer. There are so many variables to our work that change is constant; AI will be a tool, not a replacement.

AI may eliminate “wash, rinse and repeat” activity but will explode the ability to creatively solve problems. Partnership with other related professions such as finance will help deliver better, resilient designs where everyone makes a fair profit: designers, constructors, operation and maintenance providers, and financial entities; and the owner will be saddled with less risk. That’s a very bright prospect for all.

Focus on 3V and Publishing Problems

My concern is if the databases aren’t verified, validated and valuable (3V), then we have a serious challenge. One bad bridge design in a database could produce 100,000 bad bridges. This is a whole new era of possibility and risk.

Currently there’s also pressure on the publishing industry to publish research in free open-source publications—a transition that’s causing upheaval in the industry’s traditional business model. Previously, the model was for authors to fund the cost of open-access publication through their research grants, many of which were federal grants. With the pullback in federal research and the fact that a large percentage of authors are international, this poses a significant challenge.

In journals, this transition stems in part from evolving public-access mandates around the globe as well as changing researcher attitudes. For standards, pending legislation related to content that’s incorporated by reference into regulatory code may push incorporation of provisions to be publicly accessible.

At the same time that underlying research and standards content may become more freely accessible, publishers are focusing on preparing their content in formats that are readily usable in an agentic AI ecosystem. Through time, the expectation is that such content will be increasingly consumed by machines to perform functions for humans, as opposed to direct consumption of the underlying content and data by humans themselves.

Time to Engage

These are real challenges that will require the entire infrastructure community to engage and find a path forward that’s fair to all and allows for innovation that holds paramount public health and safety. Standards development organizations will need the resources to verify and validate as opposed to allowing AI aggregators to earn all the profits. This is a very difficult challenge that requires the entire profession to play a role.

ASCE is currently working through our industry leader’s council, the board and a task committee as well as staff experts to find workable solutions that are nimble, as things are changing daily. Large companies also are investing in 3V databases, but how do we allow small- and medium-size firms to ride the innovation wave?

We need your thoughts, so please engage!