The State of AI in the AEC Industry

In the span of just a couple of years, artificial intelligence has gained a sizable foothold in the architecture, engineering and construction industry. 

The American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC), together with Tampa-based artificial intelligence (AI) developer BST Global, surveyed ACEC firm members in 2025 and found that “AI is now becoming embedded in the daily workflows of firms responsible for planning, designing, constructing, and maintaining the built environment.” 

The ACEC Research Institute found that 57% of member firms are at the first stage of AI maturity, which is called AI Experimenters, according to a maturity model developed by Accenture. Another 17% of firms are in the second stage, AI Builders. Only 18% describe their firm as an AI Innovator, the top maturity level.

While adoption is not universal, ACEC’s research makes clear that AI is no longer in a pilot phase. Several firms are using AI strategically to deliver real value for their clients and stakeholders. 

AI uses across operations 

Common use cases include automated document search, AI-assisted proposal writing, code compliance review, generative design, infrastructure inspection, predictive maintenance, and design simulation, according to the ACEC survey.

Florida-based ETM started a repository of past proposals and began feeding them into an AI program last year. Proposals that used to take several days to put together can now use this AI-powered database to accelerate the process.

“It’s getting to the point where we are testing it more and more and using AI as an accelerator,” said ETM Executive Vice President Drew Holley, PE, who co-leads the firm’s land development practice across the state and oversees operations. He also noted that the firm’s AI programs have helped with code compliance review and quality assurance checks.

“Because we deal with so many land development codes that change across municipalities and different jurisdictions, we can do that code research up front and see what the requirements are for each location,” Holley said. “That shortens the learning curve for us. We’ve gone so far as to start uploading site plans with dimensions on them and asking where we might be violating a code.”

Jacksonville-based RS&H is realizing similar benefits and using AI to help minimize risk on projects, both in the design phase and in the field.  

“On the risk side, no individual or team can simultaneously monitor the volume of data moving through supply chains, schedules, and procurement timelines on a major project,” said Jessica Chambers, RS&H’s vice president of digital technologies and solutions. “AI can surface warning signals earlier than human reviewers could realistically catch, giving our professionals the right information at the right moment to apply their judgment where it counts.” 

In the field, computer vision is transforming construction monitoring, Chambers added, continuously analyzing job sites for safety compliance, quality assurance and regulatory adherence, while providing critical visual intelligence in emergency scenarios.

And as the ACEC study suggests, RS&H and other firms are using AI programs to free up more time for their engineers to do more valuable work. 

“Too much of a skilled engineer's or designer's time goes toward manual drafting and documentation rather than the judgment and insight they've spent years developing,” Chambers said. “AI-driven, data-informed workflows change that by giving professionals a strong, data-backed starting point and freeing them to focus on what truly requires human expertise.”

AI accelerating, not replacing, engineering talent 

The ACEC survey found that AI tools are enhancing employee productivity by offloading repetitive tasks, enabling faster knowledge access, and expanding the ability of junior engineers to contribute meaningfully. Likewise, senior engineers are increasingly using AI to focus on creativity, mentoring, and higher-order design thinking. 

“We are looking at AI as a multiplier, not as a replacement,” said Jim Sahm, chief innovation officer for PRIME AE Group, which has seven of its 24 offices in Florida. “We're trying to provide an agile data ecosystem, if you will, permeating throughout our entire enterprise, and then overlaying artificial intelligence on top of that. And so we've developed a proprietary framework in-house to be able to do that, which gives us an opportunity to really polish and perfect the delivery of projects.” 

At ETM, the use of AI is evolving the role of the engineer and others. For younger engineers who were once tasked with building spreadsheets of information about a project, now the data they are working with can be coded by an AI platform like Claude to create a proprietary EXE program where “the user inputs are much reduced, the checks are way better, and the QA/QC is tighter,” Holley said. 

To ensure AI outputs are reliable and grounded, RS&H has begun pairing the firm’s digital talent with its technical experts and embedding data and AI/Machine Learning (ML) principals, architects, engineers, and analysts directly into project delivery teams, working alongside licensed professionals on real technical problems, Chambers said.

Moving in this direction is shaping how RS&H is thinking about hiring, Chambers added, and AI’s impact goes beyond adding a few new job titles. The firm is formalizing new job families that did not exist five years ago. Computational engineers, data-enabled designers, and project information managers are delivery-accountable roles, held to the same client outcomes as any licensed professional on the team.

“The core insight driving our approach is that AI fluency and domain expertise must travel together,” Chambers said. “An AI engineer without deep knowledge of transportation or infrastructure can produce outputs that appear sophisticated but miss what actually matters in the field. At the same time, a licensed engineer without AI fluency is increasingly limited in what they can deliver competitively.”

Holley sees a similar direction with ETM’s hiring, and he sees bigger shifts down the road as AI becomes more ingrained in the AEC industry. 

“I don’t think (AI) is changing who we’re hiring or what we’re hiring for, but there’s an expectation now as you come in that you will leverage AI to assist you in doing your job and it becomes a productivity accelerator,” Holley said. “I don’t think we’re at the point now where it’s replacing jobs in our field yet. 

“And I say ‘yet,’ because there is a time coming where some of the tasks we do will be replaced by AI.”

AI policy and governance emerge as priorities

Per the ACEC study, AEC firms face substantial obstacles to widespread AI adoption, including legal liabilities and ethical concerns about “black box” AI outputs, business model misalignment, cultural resistance among staff, and a lack of consistent standards and an industry-wide framework. 

Many firms are developing internal frameworks to guide responsible use, including policies that address data protection, intellectual property, and ethical considerations, as well as addressing the risk and security of AI models. 

Over the last 18 months, PRIME AE has been working on such a framework for AI integration and has built out a small internal software development team to integrate the technology, Sahm said. 

At ETM, “We’re very much still in the age where there is an element of trust but verify,” Holley said. “We all need to be diligent and vigilant on that front. 

“Inside the office, we are hearing people ask for guidance on how to responsibly use AI, and it’s very hard to write guidelines around the use of it when we have 20 different roles in the business. It’s a bit of the Wild Wild West, but there is certainly going to be further advancements and continued acceleration.”

Regulatory frameworks are already catching up quickly, Chambers points out. The European Union AI Act is the world’s first comprehensive legal framework for AI, and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has published the first global professional standard for the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the surveying practice. 

“The EU AI Act and emerging standards from organizations like RICS clearly point to the need for human oversight and auditability,” Chambers said. “We need to build those accountability structures into our workflows now, before they are mandated.”

Technology suppliers are shaping the ecosystem

While engineering firms are adopting and integrating tools, suppliers are building AI capabilities directly into design and analysis platforms. These partnerships are critical to scaling AI adoption across the industry.

“More and more AI plugins are being incorporated into the design software we utilize that we are testing,” Holley said. “The question comes down to, for instance, ‘Is it going to take us more time to learn this new iteration of AutoCAD’s AI plugin to save time on the backend?’ If our current process is as fast or faster, we’ll wait until the next version makes it so much easier and faster that we can’t ignore it.”

PRIME AE has invested in Microsoft’s Azure AI platform, which enables enterprises to integrate advanced generative AI, machine learning, and pre-built intelligence into their applications while maintaining strict enterprise-grade security, compliance and governance.

“It's not a shrink-wrapped product like back in the day, ‘I'm going to buy this tool, and it's great, so
I'm going to install it on my machine,’” Sahm said. “These are custom integrations of things we've done in our flow processes to be able to use AI.”

Alongside AI, digital twin development is also becoming a core service offering in the industry, providing clients with a data-informed model of their assets throughout a facility's entire lifecycle. The move from static PDF contract plans to 3D digital models carries design specifications and systems data as a living, structured environment, said RS&H Director of Digital Solutions Jess Baker. 

“Paired with AI, digital twins become the decision infrastructure for that entire lifecycle, learning how assets perform over time, anticipating maintenance needs, and helping owners make smarter investments decades from now,” Baker added.

AI program maturity varies widely 

Regardless of firm size, some firms have formal strategies, governance structures and implementation roadmaps, while others remain in an exploratory phase—running isolated pilots without a clear framework for scaling.

By far, the areas with the highest use of AI are marketing and sales – four out of five firms are using AI in this space, per the ACEC survey. Only one in three firms is using AI for project design and delivery, showing firms are being much more cautious in this high-risk area. Other areas of AI use include project management (30%), human resources (28%), and corporate strategy and finance (26%).

“Today, AI appears in pockets: individual tools, isolated workflows,” Baker said. “Over the next three to five years, I expect these two parallel trends to converge into a more seamless solution space. The place where that convergence matters most is at the handoffs in the design-build lifecycle.”

From his post at PRIME AE, Sahm looks out to the horizon and sees only the sky as the limit to what AI can do in the AEC industry. 

“It'll ultimately be better for the clients, as we'll produce a better product at the end of the day, and that's my hope and I think that's anybody's hope who works on our projects, they want to be proud of their authorship,” Sahm said. “And I think technology's going to help us get there in a grand fashion.”

It’s not just AEC firms who are using AI; clients like state departments of transportation and municipalities are building up their own AI capabilities as well, Chambers said. 

“As clients become more technically sophisticated, they need partners who can operate at a higher order, firms that bring independent judgment, hard-earned experience, and the ability to solve problems that tools alone cannot frame correctly,” she said.

As a result, Baker believes that, over the next three to five years, AI-assisted design will move from a competitive advantage to a baseline expectation. 

“Firms that are not fluent in these tools will not simply fall behind in efficiency,” Baker added. “They will struggle to compete for the same opportunities.”

Holley, like a growing number of leaders in the AEC industry, agrees. 

“AI is becoming so interwoven in our business that it’s becoming harder and harder to ignore,” he said. “If you’re not using it you’re getting left behind.”