A Regina company using AI to help manage public assets like roads, municipal buildings, and utility systems is receiving nearly $1 million in federal funding to scale its business.
The news: On Thursday, Prairies Economic Development Canada (PrairiesCan) announced $980,000 in funding for ASI Engineering, a Regina engineering consultancy that helps organizations assess and maintain physical assets like buildings, roadways, and water systems.
Funding comes through the Business Scale-up and Productivity Program, a federal initiative providing interest-free financial support for high-growth businesses looking to expand operations and commercialize innovation.
From the source: “As Canada navigates a changing global economy, we are building strength at home by supporting Canadian businesses developing the technologies … to build smarter,” Eleanor Olszewski, the minister responsible for PrairiesCan, said in a statement. “ASI Engineering’s new platform will help communities make more informed investments.”
The context: Funding will help ASI Engineering integrate AI into its proprietary asset management platform, ASI Software. That platform pieces together information about client assets through a cloud-based registry and client dashboard, providing visual summaries of asset conditions, tracking budgetary concerns, and identifying projected funding gaps or infrastructure deficits—like noting that a community centre needs preventative maintenance, or a road needs repaving. By integrating AI into its reporting, ASI Engineering claims it will be able to support continuous asset monitoring to better inform decisions on building, maintenance, and upgrading of assets.
Final thought: ASI Engineering is growing, and it’s looking to expand into both US and European markets over the next two years. With plans to further build out the ASI Software platform with climate adaptation modelling that can help organizations prepare for climate change-induced risks like wildfires and floods, PrairesCan’s investment could have returns in both assets saved, and in positioning a Canadian-based company to succeed on an international scale.
BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.
Feature image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.