By: Brian Glaser, Director, Design Technology, WSB
Eighteen months ago, the word ‘AI’ showed up in every vendor pitch, every conference keynote, and every trade publication in our industry. For many that design roads, analyze soils, and move infrastructure projects from concept to construction, most of it felt like science fiction being sold as procurement.
Every platform had an AI feature. Every sales call opened with a generative demo. The noise-to-signal ratio was brutal, and for an industry whose deliverables are measured in tons of asphalt and cubic yards of concrete, the disconnect between hype and the work can be real.
It all can be overwhelming. But overwhelm is not the same as dismissal. And curiosity, it turns out, is a more powerful force than skepticism.
Where others see AI as a disruptor to be afraid of – WSB saw it as an opportunity — one that will not replace our people and processes but streamline and support.
Leadership funded curiosity.
Our leadership didn’t hand down an AI mandate. They did something harder — they created space. The most curious staff were given room to apply the scientific method to a question that didn’t have an obvious answer yet: Where does AI actually create value in infrastructure development?
Not where the vendors say it does. Where it actually does.
That difference set the tone for everything that followed. Hypothesis, test, measure, iterate — the same rigor we apply to a geotechnical investigation or a traffic study, we applied to AI. What works? What doesn’t? Where does the output need a human eye, and where does it genuinely accelerate the process without compromising quality? Leadership met those questions with bold acceptance and gave the most innovative thinkers the freedom to find out.
It was a bet — on people, not on software. And it paid off faster than anyone expected.
We don’t use AI. We work with it.
Stanford Professor Jeremy Utley has helped popularize an important idea: AI isn’t just a tool or technology — it’s more like a collaborator on your team. You use a calculator. You use a survey instrument. You use a piece of software and then you close the window.
Working with AI is different. It’s a collaboration that supplements the talents, interests, and domain expertise of the people who already know what good infrastructure looks like. The judgment is still ours. The creativity is still ours. The institutional knowledge that comes from decades of delivering projects across every infrastructure sector — that’s irreplaceable. AI didn’t change what we know. It changed how fast we can act on it.
This philosophy runs through every application we’ve built, every workflow we’ve redesigned, and every conversation we have with clients about what’s coming next. AI at WSB supplements staff across every aspect of the business — from engineering and design to project management, quality control, business development, and internal operations. It is not a department. It is not a product line. It is the way we work now.
Earned confidence.
One of the first concerns we heard — internally and externally — was about quality. If AI is doing the work, who’s checking the work? It’s the right question. Here’s the answer nobody expected: AI didn’t reduce our quality control. It funded it.
When AI helps streamline parts of our workflow, it creates more flexibility in how we use our time. We consistently reinvest that time into deeper quality review — taking a closer look at our work, collaborating more across teams, and catching details that often get compressed under tight schedules. The result is a more efficient process and a stronger end product for our clients.
We’re not automating critical quality checks or replacing the experienced judgment that defines good design. Instead, we’re giving our teams more time to apply that expertise — to take a second look, ask better questions, and bring a higher level of focus to the work. It’s the same experienced eyes, with more capacity to do what they do best.
Quality at WSB isn’t an AI output. It’s a human output that AI gave us time to invest in properly.
Zero to hero.
Everyone is so focused on displacement — who loses their job, which industries get disrupted, which companies go under. The narrative is dominated by fear, and fear makes for great headlines but terrible strategy. This is the part of the AI story that doesn’t get enough attention. Nobody talks about what happens when a 15-year veteran structural engineer discovers they have an aptitude for automation — and suddenly has the tools to act on it.
Nobody talks about the geotechnical specialist who builds a data visualization tool over a weekend because the AI made the learning curve gentle enough to try.
These aren’t hypotheticals. These are our colleagues. And the pace continues to accelerate. New visions emerge daily.
At WSB, we aren’t looking to replace anyone. We’re discovering what’s possible when the people who know this work best are given tools that match the scale of their ambition. The skeptical are becoming optimistic. The optimistic are becoming builders. And the builders are reshaping what an infrastructure engineering firm can be.
We can’t imagine going back. And honestly — we don’t want to.
