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Meet Your New Design Copilot: This Software Powered By Generative AI Is Changing The Game For Civil Engineers

Joe Viscuso always chased the next big thing. “Growing up, I just wanted to be the first to have it,” he says. “The new Ford Mustang, it didn’t matter what it was.” That passion and curiosity have also propelled his career. His latest obsession is generative AI and how it’s transforming his field — civil engineering and construction. Viscuso is responsible for strategic growth at Pennoni, the Philadelphia-based engineering and design consulting firm, and he has spent 15 years teaching land development as an adjunct professor at Pennsylvania’s Widener University. “Our goal here at Pennoni is to be at the forefront of the technology,” he says. In the age of AI, that pursuit has become a lot more urgent. “We used to measure change in decades. Now we measure it in weeks, days and minutes,” he says. Viscuso and his team, and other civil engineering firms, have been advising Bentley Systems on the development of OpenSite+. The next-generation software uses generative AI to help civil engineers design land development sites for new industrial facilities, shopping centers, schools, parks or entire neighborhoods. Bentley Systems, the infrastructure engineering software company behind the new solution, says OpenSite+ creates site designs up to 10

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Street Smarts: Bentley’s Partnership With Google — And Its Acquisition Of Cesium — Chart A New Era For How We Design, Build And Operate Our Infrastructure

In March 2024, a huge container ship lost power as it navigated out of Baltimore Harbor. The 100,000-ton vessel veered off course and crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The collision claimed the lives of six construction workers who were performing maintenance on the bridge. It also shut down port operations and severed a vital traffic artery. The tragedy highlighted the need for more resilient infrastructure, an issue that has been on the radar of government agencies and infrastructure operators across the country, includingthe Delaware River and Bay Authority (DRBA). Starting in 2023, DRBA began installing an advanced collision protection system for the Delaware Memorial Bridge. The work involves eight massive, stone-filled “dolphin” cylinders, each 80 feet across, designed to shield the bridge’s towers. The visionary project also includes a digital twin. Digital twins are detailed virtual models of physical assets, such as bridges, water systems or even entire cities. The models unlock insights, improve collaboration and add other benefits across the lifespan of the asset — from planning and design to construction and asset operation. The digital twin of the Delaware Memorial Bridge work was created by the Philadelphia-based engineering consulting firm Pennoni. The model has allowed stakeholders

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The Time Traveler: Bentley’s Resident Visionary Gives the Infrastructure Industry a Glimpse of its Future

Greg Demchak has two views from his desk on the 43rd floor of a glass tower in London. He can look down at the cityscape — the pale dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Victorian Gothic splendor of Tower Bridge and the silty River Thames. Or he can look up at the virtual version. “It’s a pretty sick view,” he says, though it’s hard to tell which view he means. As vice president of Bentley Systems’ Emerging Technology Group, Demchak and his team built a detailed digital twin of London at the company’s innovation lab, or iLab for short. The virtual model gleams from a giant LED screen in the office foyer. The view of real London is grand, but the virtual one combines geospatial and engineering data with the latest gaming technology, like Epic Games’ Unreal Engine. The digital model allows users to zoom around London’s new crop of iconic skyscrapers. Like a seagull, users can hover high above “The Walkie Talkie,” the handset-shaped building at 20 Fenchurch Street; zoom in on “The Cheesegrater,” the wedge-like structure of 122 Leadenhall Street; or explore “The Jenga” of 8 Bishopsgate, which houses the U.K. headquarters of Bentley, the infrastructure engineering software company. “Architects

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Navigating The Future: Government, Industry Leaders Discuss AI’s Potential to Transform Transportation, Infrastructure

There’s a discreet charm to drawbridges, and Florida is the perfect place to experience it. The state boasts 50 drawbridges along the Intracoastal Waterway alone, including the picturesque Bridge of Lions in St. Augustine, which has served locals and visitors for nearly a century. These engineering marvels periodically transform the landscape, lifting their roadways to the sky and letting boats quietly slip through. Keeping them in good shape is crucial, though aging drawbridges can quickly turn from a charming sight into a bottleneck. “Any of y’all have bridges where you’re from, well, I sure hope yours are flat,” said Eileen Higgins, Miami-Dade County commissioner, whose district includes parts of Miami and Miami Beach. “You are living the dream. Ours are all drawbridges and there’s a lot of moving parts […] When they break, they got to stay up, which causes a traffic nightmare because boats can only go on water, and cars can usually go other ways.” Navigating the future Higgins was speaking at Navigating the Future of AI and Transportation, a gathering of policy and industry experts hosted by Microsoft in Washington, D.C. last week. Speakers at the event included Senator Maria Cantwell, who talked about AI’s potential to

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From Da Vinci to Digital Twins: These 5 Engineering Innovations Changed How We Build The World

Some of the most famous inventions were happy accidents. In 1827, English pharmacist John Walker was puttering around at home when he clumsily scraped a chemical-coated stick across his hearth, which burst into flames, sparking the idea for the friction match. A century later, Scottish microbiologist Alexander Fleming returned from vacation to an untidy lab and noticed a strange mold in a petri dish, which he called “penicilin.” But most groundbreaking discoveries aren’t so serendipitous. The world’s architects and engineers have spent centuries meticulously advancing the science of designing and building bridges, roads, dams and other infrastructure. Their work is deliberate, iterative and empirical. It builds on the knowledge and insights of those who came before them. Their journey started with a letter from the Old Babylonian Empire, which ended about 3,600 years ago and commonly used clay tablets to record and share information. The letter “documents the drawing of architectural ground plans,” according to historians. More than 3,000 years later, Leonardo da Vinci drew on paper stunning conceptual plans and sketches for buildings, bridges, and cities. A few hundred years later, at the start of the Industrial Revolution, French mathematician Gaspard Monge invented descriptive geometry, a system that allowed

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Give Me Shelter: These Digital Technologies Are Helping the World’s Infrastructure Prepare for the Changing Climate

In early May, you could hear a pin drop in Bangladesh’s classrooms and playgrounds, as the country’s schools and colleges closed in response to a ferocious heatwave. But there was no respite for rickshaw driver Mohammed Shameem, who had no choice but to ply his trade in the roasting, congested streets of Dhaka. “It is too hard to work under the sun during a brutal heatwave,” he told Reuters. Meanwhile, over in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil, citizens were launching a rescue operation with boats and jet skis to save their neighbors from the city’s most devastating floods since 1941. Marcelo Moreira Ferreira only sought shelter and abandoned the house his father built and where he had lived his whole life when the muddy waters of the Guiaba Lake reached his chest, The Guardian wrote. Although Shameen and Ferreira live on opposite sides of the world, their plight is an urgent reminder that climate action needs to remain two-pronged: Mitigation and adaptation. We must keep reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the root cause of global warming. But we must also make our towns and cities more resilient. This includes strengthening roads, dams, bridges, and power grids to withstand extreme weather, and also

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COP28: A Pivotal Moment for Both Global Climate Action & Infrastructure

The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) concluded last month after 14 days of negotiations. While opinions on its success may vary, I view the outcomes of COP28 as a historic and significant stride towards achieving net zero by 2050. Noteworthy progress was made during COP28’s pre-scheduled agenda, including the decision to involve cities at the negotiating table to ensure climate action reaches those responsible for implementing it locally, as well as agreements about how the globe can best adapt to the impacts of climate change (which I expect to cover in a future post). Most importantly, a milestone Global Stocktake agreement was reached after climate talks were forced into overtime to bridge internal divisions about how to deal with fossil fuels. This agreement stipulates a just and orderly transition away from fossil fuels and sets a new specific carbon reduction target: tripling renewables and doubling energy efficiency by 2030 to help close the energy transition gap and get on a 1.5°C pathway. Supplemented by other governmental commitments linked to public construction projects, this agreement will have profound implications for how infrastructure is designed, built, and operated. Why such profound implications? Because our current infrastructure relies heavily on fossil fuels.

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