AI engineering documents and certificates

The problem

Much of a structural engineer's week goes into documents that follow a familiar pattern: design reports, specifications, design briefs and certificates. The layout barely changes between jobs, but the details and the standards referenced have to be right.

A general AI writer will invent an engineer's name, a registration number or a clause. On a document that may be signed, that is worse than a blank page.

How it works

1. Choose the document type: Structural Design Report, Engineering Certificate, Structural Specification or Design Brief.
2. Choose the state or territory. For certificates this picks the layout: state layouts for Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia, and a generic certificate elsewhere. Every layout is the structural engineer's certificate that a certifier may rely on, not the certifier's statutory form. It also adds state drafting guidance.
3. Enter the values. The form lists every value the template carries: for a design report, the project name, address, client, structure type, soil class, wind region, importance level, design life, building class, terrain category, earthquake factor, imposed, wind and earthquake actions, key members and their grades, connections, the engineer's name, qualifications and registration, report reference, date, additional standards, and the foundation, floor, wall and roof descriptions and special considerations.
4. Select Draft document. Your values fill the template. For a design report or design brief the AI then drafts the remaining sections from retrieved Australian entries, including any description you left blank. A certificate or specification is the template and your values alone: no AI writes any part of it.
5. Anything you did not supply stays a bracketed placeholder, such as [ENGINEER NAME] or [WIND REGION — NOT PROVIDED]. Those slots are closed before the model sees them, and the response names any it wrote over anyway.
6. Each reference is checked against the knowledge base: a caution banner lists those matching no standard any region we cover publishes, and another country's real standard is reported as that.
7. The system, not the AI, adds a fixed notice to every document saying it is AI-assisted and needs review by a registered engineer.
8. The draft is saved to your Documents list with the status draft, and you can download it as DOCX, PDF or Markdown.

Worked example

Illustrative inputs, not a real project:

• document type: Structural Design Report
• state: New South Wales
• project name: Example Residence
• structure type: two-storey timber-framed house on a concrete slab
• soil class, wind region, importance level and design life: from the site investigation and your own assessment

The draft follows the template's headings. Your inputs appear where you entered them. Any value you leave blank, such as the building class, terrain category, earthquake factor, design actions or key members and connections, appears as a bracketed NOT PROVIDED placeholder for you to complete. The AI is told not to fill them, but it can still write a value, such as a terrain category or site class, into the prose, and that is not always caught. The conclusion is a placeholder too, and the AI is told never to call the design adequate. The template's introduction and applicable-standards list say the design follows the NCC and Australian Standards; that is template wording, not a finding. We haven't quoted the draft, because it is generated fresh each time.

What you would do next: fill in every placeholder from your own design results, write the conclusion yourself, and keep the template's statements about the standards only if true. Then review and sign it as the responsible engineer, or don't issue it.

What it doesn't do

• It does not produce a signed or finished document. Every output is an unsigned draft with no professional standing until a registered engineer has reviewed, corrected and signed it.
• It does not fill in your credentials. Placeholders such as [ENGINEER NAME] stay until you replace them. Never issue a document with a placeholder left in.
• It does not design anything. It calculates no loads, sizes no members and checks no design; wrong input gives confident, wrong output.
• Its references can still be wrong. Retrieval is limited to Australian entries, and a clause number is ticked only when we find it in one. A tick is not a reading of the clause. Check every citation against the current published edition (buy standards from Standards Australia).
• Its certificates declare nothing. Design values you leave blank on the form appear as bracketed placeholders. The statement of compliance itself is a placeholder too: every layout leaves that declaration, the NCC edition and any insurance statement for you to write and adopt, because a tool cannot make a declaration on your behalf. Complete each one, then lodge the certificate yourself.