By Robert L. Reid
BRK Ambiental, one of the largest private water and wastewater utilities in Brazil, is relying on a generative design software system that uses artificial intelligence technology to address a statutory requirement that 90% of Brazil’s population have access to sewage collection and wastewater treatment by Dec. 31, 2033. It is a daunting task, given that currently only about 54% of Brazilians receive such services, notes Caique Amorim, formerly a sanitary and environmental engineer at BRK in Sao Paulo.
“We need to model and construct a lot of new wastewater treatment plans and also need to make the existing ones achieve higher performance,” said Amorim, who left BRK earlier this year.
That’s why, starting in 2021, BRK partnered with Transcend, based in Princeton, New Jersey, to use the Transcend Design Generator software system to accelerate design of new wastewater infrastructure. The TDG system is a cloud-based, proprietary software that “fully automates the preliminary design of vertical assets, including water, wastewater, electrical substations, and other critical infrastructure in eight hours or less,” according to Transcend’s website.
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That eight-hour time frame was especially appealing to BRK because previously the utility had relied on outside consultants to develop preliminary designs of new wastewater facilities. Such consultants “might run one or two alternatives, and it would take weeks or months to get their results,” Amorim said. “Then, if we wanted anything changed, we had to send in revisions, which took more time.”
By contrast, the TDG system enables BRK to complete preliminary design work in-house in less than a day, “and changes can be made with just a click of the mouse,” Amorim explained. The system, he concluded, “has transformed our project evaluation and design processes.”
Consequently, BRK can generate as many as 10 additional design options per facility and cut certain development time frames from as much as four months to just one week, according to Mariana Bin, an engineering leader at BRK who appeared with Amorim in a Transcend webinar on the TDG system in February. Overall, the system helps BRK reduce preliminary design costs by up to 80%, Bin says.
Evaluating options
Designed to work best with Microsoft and Autodesk design tools, the TDG system automates building information modeling using inputs such as the volume of wastewater that will come into the plant, the expected composition of that wastewater, the treatment methods being considered, and whatever existing assets will be incorporated into the facility, says Adam Tank, a Transcend co-founder. It is intended for just the planning or conceptual design phases of a project, not the entire design process, Tank stresses. Instead, the TDG helps “create the foundation for the user to then take it through detailed design,” meaning the user doesn’t have to “start from scratch every time” when launching a new project, he explained.
At BRK, the system helps engineers conduct a wide range of work on new and existing facilities, from determining the thickness of walls in wastewater tanks to estimating capital and operating expenses, collecting data for environmental permits, and even applying for bank loans, Amorim says. The system helps BRK compare traditional wastewater treatment methods – such as activated sludge technology versus moving bed biofilm reactor technology – based on such factors as the smaller footprint required for an MBBR facility but the higher energy consumption expected.
The software also can help justify installing new treatment methods.
“We wanted to see how efficient trickling filters would be for (existing) sites,” Amorim said of the treatment technology that removes organic matter from wastewater. “So, we input all the information and ran the (TDG) software,” which “proved the investment in trickling filters was worthwhile.”
Likewise, when designing new facilities, the TDG can help utilities demonstrate that a proposed site’s footprint is too small for certain traditional methods. “We can run all the available technologies in the platform to illustrate to people that traditional approaches won’t work at this site, so we need to find another technology,” Amorim said.
Delivering value
Although Tank realizes there is “a lot of hesitancy” among some in the architecture and engineering industry to adopt innovations such as TDG, he strongly believes “the future of design in critical infrastructure is generative design” that relies on a combination of industry standards, “textbook” engineering calculations, and AI to enhance the design process. It is not something that the industry should fear. Instead, engineers and others will be able to “deliver more value to your customers through these tools,” and it could even make the work of engineers or architects “much more fun, much more satisfying.”
Imagine that today an engineer has the time and resources to evaluate only two or three ideas about the design of a new wastewater treatment plant, Tank suggests. “Our software can automate much of that work in the planning process,” he explained, “unleashing the power and creativity of smart engineers” for value-added work. As a result, that same engineer can now consider potentially hundreds of scenarios for the new plant, focusing on the most sustainable options, the most cost-effective solutions, and the options that will be the “easiest to communicate to the public to get their approval to fund this type of work – things that engineers don’t have time to do today!”
