Engineering 2025
Design tools and methodology are evolving fast and will require a bigger change than when we went from ‘ink’ to ‘digital' drawings around 25 years ago. Imagine what your job would look like in a few years with assisted design, VR, AR and on-site manufacturing in place:
Poonam was struggling with the design software for the new cycle-pedestrian bridge she was assigned to. She was sure the algorithms were fine but maybe a bit too smart. Even with the program’s AI asking for details and constraints it was easy to get something wrong. Yesterday’s design was no-doubt adequate but used a partly cantilevered design that cut into the embankment, something that wasn’t supposed to happen while one of the early iterations had moved the minimum height restriction for the drones cleaning the canal off-centre, perfectly good solutions that were still ‘wrong’. The more experienced engineers were making a game of setting the constraints such that they could predict the main elements of the design correctly but it was tough. Their team-lead Wen Cheong approved of that as he said it meant you were actually understanding the structure but he was none-too-pleased when one of these games led to almost 10% more steel in one of the designs than could be managed with a very similar result. What was internally called the ‘anything goes’ mode with no restrictions on element sizing wasn’t helping either, despite her trust in the software she was always glad these structures went through an independent check before release.
2 Weeks later Wen Cheong and Poonam walked down the middle of the 2-way cycle path and reviewed the structure one last time before the presentation, following the track, looking at the kerb between the track and the pedestrian pavement, assessing whether the guardrail didn’t ‘feel’ to close and paying particular attention to the intersection at the bottom of the slope where a low eastern sun could play havoc on the view of it.
‘Walking’ back Wen Cheong had the program remove the deck and run through the load cases showing the stress distribution in the latticework of the support structure. The organic shape resulted from the material optimising design algorithm that took even the slightest asymmetry in loads or dimensions into account. The resulting structure was a lot less straightforward than the ‘old fashioned’ trusses he started working with but with some practice he found he could still understand the main load paths, certainly for such a relatively simple bridge as this. The main issue for these hyperoptimised designs was ensuring all boundary conditions were properly defined, starting with the loads, it wouldn’t be the first time he found an issue there and he just wanted to re-assure himself again.
Ultimately satisfied they pulled-off their VR goggles and had a final look at the questionnaire of the reviewer from the municipality. It was dark outside, later than he would have liked to stay in the office but it was an important assignment, a first for a municipality 8,000 kilometers away and though technically no different than one in-town it could put the company on the global map, now all they had to do was wait for the municipal reviewer to connect.
Johan was walking to the canal where at the moment only the big LED sign indicated the future new crossing. He’d gone through the models during the past few weeks, seeing the development of the bridge taking shape and today, if all went well, would sign off for manufacturing. There was no question on the actual structural design anymore but, before a ‘spade went into the ground’, final compatibility checks were necessary. He just hoped things would work, the GPS on his AR glasses was good but not good enough for the centimeter or so accuracy necessary for this walkthrough and so local benchmarks had been installed yesterday but he never liked an untested set-up.
10 Minutes later the 3 of them walked down the existing road confirming existing and future kerbs lined-up and there was indeed space for the new traffic lights, John seeing the consultant’s latest model superimposed on his glasses and Wen Cheong and Poonam seeing his ‘live’ view merged with their models. Done with the west bank Johan released his drone to review the east bank, he’d have preferred to drive around himself but realised how late it was ‘over there’ and so opted for the faster option.
All went well until Poonam noticed something in the east embankment and zoomed in. Johan swore under his breath, a pipe was protruding from a point where the subsurface model didn’t show a thing. In a city as old has his there was undigitised stuff everywhere, most of it abandoned and not functional but you never knew, it would be back to the actual archives for him again to confirm.
A week later Hendry rolled-up his Protruder-2100 to the site. The machine, towed behind his hydrogen heavy-haul, unfolded gracefully into a tent-shaped spiderweb over the prepared working floor. After entering and re-confirming the job co-ordinates all he had to do was wait for the first truck of extru-crete to start work, they still had plenty of Fiber-Bond? in the hopper. Once the first load was being processed properly he could go to the junction-job he set-up 2 days ago and check progress.
With the power-assist of the e-cycle kicking-in Harry crossed the canal to drop his daughter, safe in the cocoon of his bike, off at daycare. He’d seen the structure come up in the last 3 weeks and marveled both at the speed it had appeared at as the fact it saved him a near 4 km detour, even with the assist that was a difference. The bridge looked like nothing he grew up with, organic and with few straight lines it looked more like some of the old sci-fi structures seen in his father’s movie collection, not so sci-fi now.
During the close-out meeting Johan was walking the engineers across the bridge, this time on the pedestrian path with e-cycle’s zipping by and it was worth, in his mind, comparing the experience of last month’s virtual walk-through. On the whole he thought the team could be quite satisfied, the integrated des-fab software had come through and allowed the consultant to not only optimise the functional design but also have it ready for fabrication at the same time and oversee manufacture from their office almost half a day away. There were some minor areas of improvement, he particularly felt the reflection from the stainless steel railings was a little uncomfortable in the morning, but knew this type of thing was still tough to capture in the real-time models, some upgrade necessary there.
A lot of the tools are ready, the pilots are running, how many of your staff are ready for this? to design, model and make construction ready in 3D, review this with your client and construct? The technology is (almost) there, are you?