Design-build thrives on efficiency, collaboration and streamlined project delivery. Yet despite major investments in BIM, digital twins and cloud collaboration, teams still face fragmented data and slow decision-making. The issue isn’t access to data but an inability to act on it in real time.
Today’s project teams have everything from models and drawings to schedules, cost reports and live sensor updates. But data isn’t the same as intelligence. Critical insights are often buried in disconnected systems, forcing teams to spend hours hunting them down before they can take action.
AI is changing that. Across industries, AI is transforming how professionals interact with complex data, surfacing insights in real time. In the built environment, it’s driving a shift from static common data environments (CDEs) toward intelligent connected data environments (ICDEs), where data is not only aggregated but structured for decision-making and automation.
From Static Data to an Intelligent Connected Data Environment
Traditional systems used in the built environment have been created around structured workflows: upload a model, run a report, generate a dashboard, interpret the results. While these tools improve project coordination, they still require users to find their own answers.
Imagine an infrastructure owner managing a new transportation hub, overseeing multiple contractors while ensuring compliance. Typically, this would mean pulling reports, manually coordinating teams and sifting through data to identify risks.
Today, solutions integrate live project data, federated BIM models, compliance tracking and operational intelligence in a single environment, making infrastructure management more efficient. LeapThought’s FULCRUMHQ, an Integrated Digital Delivery (IDD) platform, is an example of how this is being done. Used on complex projects and across portfolios, it connects teams, automates compliance tracking and ensures smoother handovers.
GenieHQ, an AI-powered assistant now built into the FULCRUMHQ platform, allows professionals to interact with live project data using intuitive, command-driven queries. Instead of navigating static dashboards, users engage directly through a browser-based interface, gaining visual clarity and fast access to insights across individual projects, concurrent initiatives or entire asset portfolios.
Until recently, FULCRUMHQ’s machine intelligence operated behind the scenes, powering complex computations within live project workflows. GenieHQ has now made that intelligence accessible through a browser-based AI assistant, offering command-driven interactions that make it easier for professionals to see, understand and act on critical project data.
Asset owners or project managers can now explore data across their portfolio by asking GenieHQ high-level questions such as: “Which projects have pending compliance reviews?” This eliminates the need for multiple dashboards, asGenieHQ then surfaces a structured response by pulling from the model data, submission records and feedback so users can quickly identify where attention is needed.
This represents a major leap beyond traditional CDEs — which function as static repositories — toward an intelligent connected data environment, where project data is continuously updated, validated and made actionable throughout the infrastructure lifecycle.
Why AI is Essential for Intelligent Infrastructure Lifecycle Management
For infrastructure stakeholders, AI’s real value goes beyond automation by accelerating smarter decisions at every stage of a project’s lifecycle.
In the design phase, AI can analyze early-stage models to detect clashes, material inefficiencies and regulatory gaps before they escalate into costly redesigns. On a large-scale public housing development, for instance, the FULCRUMHQ platform has been used to automatically assess envelope and printability scores, streamlining early-stage reviews.
During construction, AI overlays live site data onto BIM models, providing real-time updates on scheduling risks, material availability and quality control issues. In large infrastructure projects involving multiple disciplines, GenieHQ can support change tracking across BIM versions, highlighting discrepancies, comparing submissions and surfacing key modifications for review to help teams stay aligned.
At handover, asset owners receive not just a BIM model but an AI-enhanced digital twin that can be integrated with facilities systems, providing a foundation for ongoing updates and analytics. GenieHQ brings this intelligence to the forefront, allowing professionals to engage with their data more naturally and reducing the friction often caused by complex interfaces or disconnected systems.
Most AECO professionals have had to adapt to complex software interfaces to retrieve insights. AI reverses that dynamic by adapting technology to how professionals naturally ask questions and make decisions using their domain expertise.
From Digital Transformation to AI-Driven Execution
AI-powered project intelligence is certainly convenient, but it’s much more than that. Well-conceived AI project intelligence improves execution.
Rework remains one of the biggest cost drivers in construction, often caused by issues that could have been caught earlier with better data visibility. When both direct and indirect costs are factored in, total rework typically accounts for around 7.3% to 10.9% of construction costs and, on average, adds nearly 10% to the project schedule. AI surfaces insights proactively, providing real-time risk assessments instead of relying solely on scheduled reports or manual inspections.
For asset owners, tracking performance in real time allows infrastructure to be monitored, optimized and maintained with greater precision. Intelligent assistants like GenieHQ can enhance operational oversight by providing structured access to asset performance data, supporting visibility into asset performance trends and enabling faster responses during operations and maintenance. The transition to AI-powered infrastructure management doesn’t require abandoning existing tools. Instead, AI enhances them — integrating with BIM, GIS, asset management platforms and live IoT data to create a more dynamic, responsive and intelligent built environment.
What Comes Next?
Infrastructure stakeholders are at an inflection point. Digital transformation laid the foundation for efficiency, but the next wave of innovation will be defined by how effectively teams interact with project intelligence in real time.
AI won’t replace human expertise. Done well, it will enhance it and ensure decisions are based on the best available information at any given moment.
The real question isn’t whether AI will be part of the industry’s future but how quickly firms will embrace it to solve real-world challenges today. The organizations leading this shift won’t necessarily be the ones with the most data but the ones that can act on it the fastest.
The built environment sector has spent years digitizing workflows. Now, it’s time to go further — transforming common data environments into intelligent connected data environments. AI isn’t just another layer of technology. AI changes how professionals use data, making it possible to ask for insights directly instead of hunting them down across systems.
Just as BIM transformed design coordination, AI will redefine intelligent infrastructure lifecycle management. The shift has already begun; the only question is how quickly organizations will adapt.
About the author:
Next-generation software for the built environment and beyond. LeapThought’s digital platforms transform infrastructure lifecycle management for the world’s most ambitious capital projects in roads, rail, defense, energy, commercial construction and more.
Is your data just stored or truly intelligent? FULCRUMHQ, now with the GenieHQ AI assistant, transforms fragmented project data into an intelligent connected data environment for real-time insights, seamless compliance and smarter decision-making across the infrastructure lifecycle.
