Dynamic Infrastructure’s first contract in Australia marks the beginning of AI-driven bridge maintenance in the continent

The New York, Berlin and Tel Aviv based startup Dynamic Infrastructure has won its first contract in Australia and will deploy a novel AI-driven predictive technology for maintaining dozens of bridges and infrastructure assets in Horsham Rural City Council in the state of Victoria.

Dynamic Infrastructure has teamed up with the Australian engineering and consulting firm IF3 Pty Ltd, to win the contract to provide the council with a multi-year maintenance license. Dynamic Infrastructure estimates that Australia will become a major market for its SaaS product.

The use of Dynamic Infrastructure’s SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) product translates into huge annual savings for the owners, operation and maintenance engineers, and contractors. Dynamic Infrastructure’s AI-based decision support product automatically processes past and current inspection reports’ photos and other existing visuals, identifying future maintenance risks and evolving defects. The proprietary technology provides live, cloud-based, risk analysis of any bridge or tunnel and automatically alerts when changes are detected in maintenance and operating conditions - before they develop into large-scale failures.

Horsham is an important contract as the region is located along the A8 National Highway from Melbourne to Adelaide. The multi-year contract involves all major infrastructure assets in the region and is viewed as a proving ground for Dynamic Infrastructure’s SaaS product to enable the regional council to reduce direct and indirect maintenance costs by using the world’s first deep-learning solution for maintaining bridges and tunnels.

Sydney based IF3 is a design and engineering supplier of specialist technical services for companies and organizations in the construction and mining fields to provide bespoke solutions to design and engineering challenges.

According to Austroads, the collective of the Australian and New Zealand transport agencies, Australian bridges which were built decades ago are subject to an additional load of about 5.6% annually. The annual maintenance expense for 33,500 bridges in Australia is estimated to cost around 100 million Australian dollars and the replacement cost of potentially faulty bridges could run to billions of dollars.

To tackle the large number of old and deteriorating bridges in Australia, the Australian Government has initiated the Bridges Renewal Program. The initiative funds the upgrade and replacement of bridges to improve access for local communities and facilitate better vehicle access. On 29 September 2020, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development, Michael McCormack, announced funding for 205 projects.

“Australia is making enormous efforts to use new technologies to manage and maintain its transportation network. These moves offer huge potential for our company due to their sheer size and large number of infrastructure assets that need to be maintained,” said Saar Dickman, CEO of Dynamic Infrastructure. He adds that the company hopes to close other licensing agreements in various parts of Australia in the coming months.

Dynamic Infrastructure is currently conducting projects in various states in the U.S. as well as in Germany, Greece and Israel with private and public civil infrastructure owners and operators. The company’s clients operate a total of 30,000 assets, ranging from national, state, regional and municipal departments of transportation to Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) and private companies.

Dynamic Infrastructure harnesses the power of AI to disrupt Operation & Maintenance of mega civil infrastructure. Founded by industry professionals with decades of operation and maintenance experience for PPPs and DOTs (Departments of Transportation), Dynamic Infrastructure has become an industry leader and key driver of a data revolution in decision-making processes related to bridge and tunnel Operations & Maintenance. Headquartered in New York, NY, with offices in Germany and Israel, Dynamic Infrastructure maintains a close relationship with its clients. Learn more at http://www.diglobal.tech/.

IF3 is part of a group of engineering companies based in Sydney to provide products and services to the infrastructure industry. See more at http://www.if3.com.au/.