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MONTREAL — Artificial intelligence offers a critical tool for engineering firms looking to improve efficiency and polish their product, rather than representing a threat to jobs or companies, says WSP Global CEO Alexandre L’Heureux.
Amid an industrywide labour shortage, crumbling infrastructure and increasing project complexity, AI can inject value into areas ranging from design to data analytics and “scenario analysis,” he said Thursday.
“I don’t see this being a disrupter, in the sense that this will reduce hours or reduce the work we need to do,” he told analysts on a conference call. “I don’t see our revenue stream shrinking.
“I see this as a tool that will be able to augment the work that we’re providing for clients today,” he said.
Capacity is already strained across the sector, as baby boomers retire and the pool of engineers grows a meagre one per cent per year globally, L’Heureux said — though WSP’s own workforce is poised to increase organically by up to seven per cent this year, he added.
“There is a major infrastructure deficit globally, and having a tool that will be in a position to accelerate the design of our assets — I think it’s a great thing,” he said.
That productivity will be critical at WSP, which notched a record backlog of $19.7 billion at the end of its first quarter, up 19 per cent from a year earlier.
Recent wins include a design contract for a new bus line in greater Seattle, fresh project mandates for a Glencore mine in Argentina and a deal to design exploratory tunnels deep under the Alps for Europe’s Lyon-Turin high-speed rail line, now under construction.
In February, the Montreal-based firm closed its acquisition of Connecticut-based TRC Cos., which counts 7,000 workers, making WSP the largest engineering outfit in the U.S. by revenue, it says.
Its employees now number about 82,500, versus 72,600 a year ago and 7,000 five years ago, when it sat on the cusp of a head-spinning streak of acquisitions and organic growth.
To extend that expansion, L’Heureux has pointed to demand for construction of the facilities needed to power AI.
“We have seen a major shift, for instance, from sustainability studies to now really focusing most of our environmental team on the power and energy sector. That’s obviously driven by electrification, rising load growth and data centres,” he said, referring to the American market.
As for software, L’Heureux cited the example of an AI-empowered environmental management platform dubbed Nature Vista.
