AI for civil engineering firms. More projects without hiring engineers you can't find.
AI can draft proposals and qualification packages from past projects, assemble first drafts of drainage and design reports, organize plan review comments and responses and search the firm's archive with sources. Modern Thesis helps principals of civil engineering firms put that to work, so the firm takes on more projects without hiring engineers who are hard to find.
At a glance
- Who it's for: principals, owners and operations leaders of civil engineering firms (site development, transportation, water and wastewater, stormwater) with $10M+ in annual revenue.
- What Modern Thesis does: AI strategy, change management, implementation and ongoing stewardship, from one team.
- How it starts: a strategic assessment that measures how the work moves today and ranks where AI pays first. See the assessment.
- Where: based in the Denver area, with an office at 11001 W 120th Ave, Ste 400, Broomfield, CO 80021. On site across the Denver metro and Colorado, and remote anywhere in the US.
- What it doesn't do: stamp or sign professional work, give regulatory or legal advice, or publish a rate card. Each engagement is priced to its scope after a first conversation.
Who is this page for?
This page is for the people who run a civil engineering firm and are being asked what the firm is doing about AI. The hiring market is thin: the ACEC Research Institute's Q2 2026 survey found 84 percent of engineering firms still have at least one open position.1 Meanwhile engineers spend real time on work around the engineering: proposals, report assembly, comment responses and looking for how the firm solved a problem last time. That's where AI adds capacity.
Where does AI help a civil engineering firm?
These are examples of what can be built, not past results:
- Draft proposals and federal SF330 qualification packages from past project descriptions, resumes and the RFQ's requirements.
- Assemble first drafts of drainage reports, design memos and technical narratives from calculations and the firm's templates.
- Log plan review comments from each agency, track responses and draft response letters for engineer review.
- Search the firm's past reports, calculations and correspondence in plain language, with every answer linked to its source.
- Prepare meeting minutes, monthly progress reports and invoices backup from project records.
Does AI replace the engineer's judgment?
No. A licensed engineer owns every design decision and every stamped document. AI supports the work around it: finding, sorting and drafting. The systems we build show their sources, keep a person at every decision that matters and log what the AI did. That makes review faster, which is where the capacity comes from, and it respects the firm's professional liability.
What does Modern Thesis do for a firm like this?
Modern Thesis covers four disciplines with one team. In strategy, Jim Coleman and the team map how the work moves from first contact to final invoice. In people, we work with the professionals and staff on incentives and training, so they trust and use what gets built. In implementation, our AI specialists and Forward Deployed Engineers build private systems on the firm's own documents and connect them to the software you run. In stewardship, we stay to check accuracy, keep pace with new AI models and report the return against the baseline.
How does an engagement start?
Every engagement starts with a strategic assessment. We sit with the people who do the work, map how it moves through the firm today, and measure a baseline on the workflows that matter most: proposal hours and win rate, report assembly time, review cycles per submittal, utilization and time spent searching past work. Then we rank the opportunities by return and define the first build. If AI won't pay for itself somewhere in your business, we'll tell you.
When is something else the better choice?
If a proposal management tool or your project management software's AI features cover your needs, use them. If your firm is small and proposals are rare, the assessment may point elsewhere. If the main need is better writing, the ChatGPT or Copilot licenses you already pay for may be enough; our comparison of Copilot or ChatGPT and an AI partner walks through the difference.
How Modern Thesis handles this
We put AI to work inside xFusion, the 70-person company Jim co-founded, and then for several of its clients. For a civil engineering firm, we usually start with proposals and report assembly, because both repeat on every pursuit and project. Colorado water rights firms have their own page. Ongoing stewardship has no set end date, and you own your data, accounts, code and documentation throughout.
Questions
How are civil engineering firms using AI?
Mostly around the engineering rather than in it: proposals, report assembly, comment tracking and searching past work. These tasks take a large share of engineers' and project managers' time and repeat across projects. The engineer still designs, checks and stamps. The return is more projects per engineer and faster turnaround.
Can AI write engineering proposals?
It can draft them from your firm's own material: past project descriptions, resumes, approach sections and the specific requirements of the RFP or RFQ. The project manager edits and decides the strategy. The gain is starting from a strong, compliant draft instead of a blank page.
Is our CAD and design data safe with AI?
It should stay private to your firm. We build on providers whose business terms don't train on customer data, keep access limited and agreed in writing and never use client data to train AI models. Most of the value comes from documents and correspondence rather than CAD files, which can stay where they are.