ASI Engineering
Asset management engineering
Field app phase 1 tested, road condition AI kicked off
Automating an asset management engineering firm, and building the field app its assessors work from
ASI Engineering, ASI-Asset Strategy Inc., is Canada's leader in asset management engineering, working with municipalities, utilities, transportation authorities, and government facilities out of Regina, Calgary, and Vancouver. We are their technology team across several parallel workstreams: the AI assistant on their website, proposal automation, invoice and payment automation, an AI-integrated workload and attendance system, the field app their assessors use to capture asset condition in realtime, and the road condition assessment AI now getting under way.
asiengineering.ca6
Workstreams delivered in parallel, from the website through to the field
Phase 1
Field condition app tested with assessors, next phase in build
Realtime
Asset condition captured on site instead of typed up afterwards
Live
A multi-phase engagement running now, road condition AI just started
The challenge
An engineering firm that tells municipalities how to look after their infrastructure spends a surprising amount of its own week on work no engineer should be doing. Proposals get rewritten from scratch for every tender when most of the substance is the same each time. Invoices, payment chasing, and the email around them eat hours that are not billable to anyone. Who is on which site this week lives in a spreadsheet and someone's memory. Worst of all, condition assessment, the thing the firm is actually paid for, was being captured on site and then typed up afterwards, which is where hours disappear and where the errors that matter get introduced. None of this is one problem with one product to buy. It is six problems in the same organisation, and picking them off one vendor at a time would have taken years and left the seams between them unmanaged.
What we did
We took it as one engagement with several phases running in parallel, sequenced so each one paid for itself before the next started. The quick, visible wins went first: an AI assistant on the website that answers the questions the team was fielding by email, then proposal automation, because that is the single largest recurring drain on senior time. Email, payment, and invoice automation followed, and then the AI-integrated workload and attendance system, so scheduling and time on site stopped being reconstructed at month end. With the office side moving, we went to the field. The condition assessment app is the piece the rest of it exists to serve: assessors record the state of every asset on site, on a phone or a tablet, with the data landing in realtime and the routine work, the calculations, the flags, the reporting, handled automatically instead of by hand. Phase one went through testing before anything was expanded, because a field app that fails on site with an assessor standing in the rain is worse than no app. Running alongside that is the newest phase, the road condition assessment AI, which takes the same idea and applies it to road networks for the ASI team.
The result
This is a live, multi-phase engagement, and we would rather describe it as it stands than dress it up. The website assistant, the proposal automation, and the invoice, payment, and email automation are in use. The workload and attendance system is integrated into how the team runs. The field condition assessment app has completed phase one testing and the next phase is in build. The road condition assessment AI has kicked off with the ASI team. Across all of it, the accounts, the repositories, and the intellectual property sit with ASI, and this page gets updated with what came of each phase as the milestones land.
Every piece of it, stage by stage.
- 01
Understanding how the firm actually runs
Before proposing anything, working through where the week goes for an engineering practice doing condition assessments across three provinces. The automation list came out of that, in the order that would return the most time soonest.
- 02
The AI assistant on the website
A chatbot that answers what prospective clients and municipalities were previously emailing in for, trained on ASI's own services and grounded in their material rather than making things up about an engineering firm's scope.
- 03
Proposal automation
The largest recurring drain on senior time. Turning the proposal process into something assembled from what the firm already knows rather than rewritten for each tender, so the engineers are reviewing a draft instead of starting one.
- 04
Email, invoice, and payment automation
The administrative loop closed: invoices raised, sent, and followed up, payments reconciled, and the surrounding correspondence handled automatically. Unglamorous work that gives back a day a week.
- 05
AI-integrated workload and attendance
Who is on which site, for how long, and against which project, captured as it happens rather than reconstructed at month end, with the AI layer doing the allocation work a coordinator was doing by hand.
- 06
The field condition assessment app
The centre of it. Assessors capture the condition of every asset on site, with realtime data collection and the calculations, flags, and reporting automated, so the assessment is finished when the assessor leaves the site rather than three days later.
- 07
Phase one testing, complete
The app put in front of real assessors on real sites before it was widened. A field tool has to survive bad signal, gloves, and daylight on a screen, and the only way to know it does is to test it where it will be used.
- 08
Road condition assessment AI
The newest phase, kicked off with the ASI team: applying the same approach to road networks, so road condition is assessed with AI rather than surveyed entirely by eye.
- 09
Ongoing, across phases
We are in this one now. The phases continue in parallel, and each is scoped, built, tested, and handed over on its own terms rather than as one release everyone waits for.
Scope of the engagement
- Website AI assistant
- Proposal automation
- Invoice and payment automation
- Workload and attendance
- Field condition app
- Realtime data capture
- App testing
- Road condition AI
Wherever you’re starting from, let’s figure out the next step.
Tell us what you’re building. We’ll tell you honestly whether we’re the right team for it.