Based on planned and anticipated growth, global consultancy STV has formed a strategic partnership with Transcend, a manufacturer of generative design tools for wastewater treatment plants. The technology company produces complete 3D models for treatment facilities that owners of larger projects can incorporate into their capital planning and for design teams to adapt to changing customer needs.
“Transcend brings a lot of value to our ability to consider a universe of options, narrow them down and ultimately make the final selection with the owner, compressing that timeline and creating more efficiencies,” said Chris Haney, president of STV water operations group.
STV anticipates more work not only on improvements and expansions of wastewater treatment plants, but also to meet the requirements of federal regulations that have been enacted in recent years. “The PFAS regulations came in last year, and that’s going to create quite a bit of work for the next few years and decades,” Haney adds, noting that there aren’t enough dollars available for all the necessary projects, and property owners will have to maximize the funding they have obtained.
Transcend was founded in 2019, originally as an EPC company looking to create new design concepts in wastewater treatment. The system is based on parametric and generative design principles, unlike the new type of machine learning and artificial intelligence type systems based on large language models seen with ChatGPT and similar AI systems.
That’s an important distinction, says Adam Tank, chief customer officer at Transcend, because his company’s AI system isn’t capable of the kinds of “hallucinations” and sporadically unreliable output that some other AI tools can spit.
“There is a lot of talk about generative AI [like ChatGPT] versus generative design, and we are the latter”, he explains. “I would never trust a generative AI model to create a physical structure that has to be based on engineering principles and decisions, as we cannot track the decisions that model made to create the final output” .
Instead, Transcend works from basic engineering principles and rules in its generative output and gives the user the ability to check their work. The goal isn’t to eliminate the designer, but to accelerate their ability to iterate on different designs based on the client’s needs, Tank says.
“Every decision the software makes can be traced back to a textbook rule of thumb,” he explains. “So if you ask why there are this number of blowers or membranes, he can show you in an engineering textbook the page where the formula he used is.”
Transcend’s models are exported in widely used formats, with their piping designs editable in AutoCAD and an option to export an RVT file for direct use in Revit.
Transcend’s system works through several stages. It starts with a baseline of water quality and effluent processing goals and available treatment options. It then considers site and civil data, the physical constraints of the plant location, and how these factors would affect standard or non-standard plant designs. This is not only useful for greenfield projects, but also for optimizing existing plants, says Tank.
“So we can take a geolocated map and mark the buildings, and give the software parameters for a clarifier, the depth of the foundations, the thickness of the walls, and the software can make intelligent decisions. You can also do this with a facility built 20 to 30 years ago where you’ve lost the way it’s built and works differently than designed.”
This approach can lead to even broader discussions with customers, says Tank. “Once you see what’s working as designed and how it’s working, we can ask if there’s room for improvement, or realize we’re maxed out and need to shift on the CapEx side. [of the discussion].”
A useful tool in a demanding sector
For STV, this kind of rapid automation can help meet the growing demand for water work, Haney says. “It doesn’t mean we push a button on the can and provide ourselves with a state-of-the-art wastewater plant, but there are bits and pieces early in the project that can be significantly automated and streamlined.”
But the deliverables aren’t the real value of Transcend’s tools, Haney explains. “We’re now in a place where we can have much broader conversations with clients about selecting the right approach for a particular project.” And it is not only in the design phase, but also much earlier. “It’s very beneficial on the front end, when the customer only has an idea of what they want. With these scenarios we can create [in Transcend] conversations can start about bigger, broader ideas.”
STV doesn’t plan to replace the input of human engineers on projects, but Transcend is expanding their capabilities as engineers, says Tank, who notes that the tech company also has its own roster of wastewater and process engineers licensed that configure the generative design system.
“We want to build [designs] that have been tried and true, but if there’s an option to try something other than Transcend, that’s like checking a box,” he says. “Why not try a membrane plant, or granular activated sludge, or look at the post treatment? When engineers can look at more options, they can be more proactive.”
And for all the engineers used to tweaking a few parameters in simulation software and calling it a day, Tank says Transcend has found that there are plenty of engineers who want to try new ideas. “We find that there are evil, smart engineers who are looking for the traditional treatment, but they have a wild idea that they think it will work. However, traditional engineering doesn’t have the time or money to try it, so they give the customer what they want. “Could we reuse these tanks and change them?” We run a scenario in Transcend and create the data to show that is a valid option they should consider,” he says.
All of this is within the engineer’s current job, but it allows for options that traditionally wouldn’t be worth the time or money to explore. “They’re not trying to massage the data to get the answer they want, but by testing ideas that they don’t have time to simulate, they’re proving that this wild idea can work,” adds Tank.
And for some growth markets, thinking outside the box may be more of a necessity than ever, Haney says. “Texas already has challenges meeting its water demands, and the state’s water needs are valued at $150 billion,” Haney says, adding that high-demand facilities such as of data, they will only tax the water infrastructure more. “We see Transcend as a partner and an opportunity to address these issues.”
