520+ engineers. 9 offices across 4 continents. 35 major infrastructure projects per year — and 60% of solved technical challenges re-investigated from scratch because the knowledge walked out the door when teams disbanded.
StructureWorks Group is a multinational infrastructure consulting firm headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, with offices in Dubai, Singapore, Toronto, São Paulo, London, Mumbai, Sydney, and Cape Town. They design and oversee construction of bridges, tunnels, highways, and transit systems — projects that typically span 18 to 36 months and involve cross-functional teams of structural, geotechnical, and transportation engineers.
Each project is a temporary organization: a team assembles, solves complex engineering challenges, delivers the project, and disbands. The knowledge stays with the people — until those people move to a different project, a different office, or a different company.
StructureWorks was bleeding expertise at every project close-out:
An internal analysis revealed that 60% of technical challenges encountered on new projects had already been solved on previous ones. A soil stabilization technique perfected on the Dubai Metro Extension was re-investigated from scratch 14 months later by a different team on the Mumbai Coastal Road. The solution existed — nobody knew where to find it.
When a project closes out, the team scatters. Engineers return to their home offices, move to other projects, or leave the company. The project's close-out report — typically a 200-page PDF — captures formal deliverables but misses the tacit knowledge: which subcontractors to avoid, what regulatory shortcuts exist, and which design approaches were tried and abandoned.
Each office ran its own document management system. Zurich used SharePoint, Dubai had a custom solution, Singapore used Google Drive, and Toronto was still on a legacy file server. Cross-office knowledge sharing meant booking a call with someone who might remember something from 3 years ago.
Chief Knowledge Officer Maria Santos led the rollout, starting with the three most active offices:
Wissenswerk connected to SharePoint (Zurich), Google Drive (Singapore), and the custom DMS (Dubai) simultaneously. 12,000 project documents were indexed in the first week — structural calculations, geotechnical reports, design review notes, and close-out reports from 8 years of projects.
Wissenswerk's AI conducted debrief sessions with engineers from 6 recently completed projects. Each 5-minute session captured the lessons that never make it into formal reports: vendor reliability issues, regulatory workarounds, design alternatives that were considered but not chosen, and client communication strategies. 420 sessions produced 2,600+ structured knowledge entries.
StructureWorks' document archive contained thousands of engineering diagrams — structural cross-sections, load distribution charts, and geotechnical profiles. Wissenswerk's visual knowledge extraction processed 4,800 diagrams, making their content queryable. An engineer could now ask "show me pile foundation designs for soft clay conditions" and find relevant diagrams from projects in Singapore, Mumbai, and São Paulo.
The remaining 6 offices were onboarded over 8 weeks. A new project kickoff workflow was introduced: before starting any design work, teams now query Astra for relevant precedents from past projects. The "Solved Before?" check became a mandatory step in the project initiation process.
Two stories that showed the organization what was possible:
A geotechnical team in Cape Town was bidding on a bridge retrofit over a tidal estuary. During the "Solved Before?" check, Astra surfaced a detailed soil stabilization report from a Sydney project 4 years earlier — same geological conditions, same saltwater exposure. The Cape Town team adapted the Sydney approach instead of starting from scratch, cutting the design phase by 11 weeks and saving an estimated €340,000 in engineering hours.
Found 3 relevant precedents. The Sydney Harbour Connector (2020) used jet grouting with saltwater-resistant additives for identical conditions. The technique reduced settlement by 78% and was completed 3 weeks ahead of schedule.
StructureWorks' most experienced tunnel engineer, with 28 years at the firm, announced his retirement. In the past, this would have meant months of frantic knowledge transfer meetings. Instead, he participated in 24 AI debrief sessions over 6 weeks. Wissenswerk captured his expertise on tunnel boring machine selection, ground settlement prediction, and emergency protocol design — knowledge that had only existed in his head. Three months after his retirement, a junior engineer in Toronto solved a tunnel ventilation problem using insights from his debriefs.
12 months after full deployment across all 9 offices:
"We used to joke that every project started from zero. It wasn't funny — it was costing us millions. Now when a team starts a new bridge or tunnel project, they ask Astra 'has this been solved before?' and nine times out of ten, the answer is yes. That single workflow change has transformed how we operate."
Every project at StructureWorks now follows a knowledge-driven lifecycle:
Before any design work begins, the team queries Astra for relevant precedents from past projects across all 9 offices.
Weekly AI debrief sessions capture decisions, challenges, and solutions as the project progresses — not just at close-out.
When the project ends, all documents, debriefs, and diagrams are already indexed. The team disbands, but the knowledge stays forever.
Wissenswerk