Environmental
Ecobot Collector supports efficient collection of field data, including geospatial data and photos.
A CONTINUED PUSH: DIGITALIZATION & ENVIRONMENTAL PERMITTING In many ways , the recent push towards AI-enabled products is part of an even longer push towards digitization throughout the AEC industry. While many parts of the AEC industry are leading the way with AI and digital technologies, others have been slower to adopt. The Environmental Regulatory industry is one area that was initially slow to begin the digital transition, but in recent years has warmed up to digitizing its processes. One of the firms supporting the AEC industry’s charge towards efficiency and transparency is Ecobot, which launched in 2018 as one of the first digital solutions for environmental permitting. Ecobot quickly established a strong track record of reliability—both as a secure software and as a robust and accurate tool that supports the regulated community in advancing critical infrastructure projects more swiftly, and enabling large-scale environmental data management beyond the permit. By Luke Carothers way we find and consume software has shifted towards the enablement of end users. “Consumers are inclined to identify solutions on their own,” said Lance, “With the goal of making their jobs easier and more effective. They adopt what’s accessible to them. And when there’s a groundswell of interest, companies will standardize and benefit from increased efficiency, transparency, and data normalization.”
On a higher level, large corporations and government agencies are incentivized to adopt and deploy digital tools with a focus on enhancing efficiency and enabling climate resilient design for infrastructure projects. Lance points out several initiatives and pieces of legislation from the federal government—such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)—that establish a connection between better infrastructure and answering the climate crisis, as well as recognizing the need to digitize data. “The digitization of data, particularly within environmental permitting and data processing, is a key opportunity to speed infrastructure projects, build assets that are climate-resilient, and leverage environmental data long-term and at scale,” says Lance. To this end, several states have already adopted digitized permitting processes that have resulted in significant improvements to efficiency and transparency in permitting. For example, in 2023, Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) launched the Permit Enhancement and Evaluation Program (PEEP), which improved upon their previous systems by streamlining the permitting process, shortening project timelines and boosting public transparency within that project. Fall 2024 csengineermag.com 29
In over a half a decade of operation, Ecobot has never had a report rejected by a regulator for an error—in fact, environmental consultants have generated nearly 170,000 regulatory reports using the software. As the environmental industry looks to get further faster and mitigate the effects of climate change, Ecobot and other environmental tech companies are poised to offer immediate efficiency and transparency across an increasingly distributed workforce. Lee Lance, Co-Founder and CEO of Ecobot, believes the transformative promise of AI has made modernization a mandate. The growth of AI has increased the demand for digital tools across the industry, and from top to bottom—from the corporate level to the individual user. Ecobot has witnessed a trend that has swept the software industry: that the
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