01
From design intent
The engineer states the crossing or alignment — geometry, constraints, and the design standard to apply — rather than redrawing every sheet when the design moves.
In development · Abuja
An AI-native design system for roads and bridges.
SpanStruct uses AI to drive the industry-standard design environments highway engineers already work in — to produce drawings, calculation reports and bills of quantities from a single design intent.
The problem
Manual drafting, calculations and quantities still dominate highway design.
On a typical highway project, a large share of a design team’s time goes into drawing, repeating calculations, and taking off quantities by hand. When those documents are produced separately, they can drift apart. A late change then has to be chased through the model, the sheets, the calculation report and the bill of quantities — and mistakes are expensive when they are found on site rather than at the desk.
02
To a checked model
A calculation kernel iterates the design, then adapters drive the industry-standard design environments already used on the project, so the model is built in the software engineers already know.
03
To drawings, calcs and BOQ
The same chain issues drawings, calculation reports and quantities. Figures printed on those documents are checked against what the design platform itself returns.
04
In tools already on the desk
The point is not a new drawing package to learn. The system is built to work inside the design environments already on the desk, with further adapters in development for analysis and hydraulics tools.
How it works
AI directs the work. A calculation kernel does the thinking. The design tools do the drawing.
In the system’s own terms: AI is the brain, Python is the orchestration and calculation kernel, and external software is the hands. Deliverables are drawings, calculation reports, quantities and GIS.
01
Intent
Capture the design intent — alignment or structure, constraints, and the standard that should govern the numbers.
02
Kernel
Iterate the design in a calculation kernel: linear referencing, constraints, a standards engine with clause-level citations, and a traceable path from input to result.
03
Adapters
Adapters drive the industry-standard design environments so the model is produced as native elements in the tools engineers already use. Adapters are also in development for analysis and hydraulics software.
04
Deliverables
Issue the drawings, the calculation report, the bill of quantities, and GIS. Values that appear on those documents are meant to be checked against a platform read-back or a second source, not taken on trust from the layout alone.
Status
In development, and already in use on the founder’s own work.
SpanStruct is not a finished commercial product. There is no claim here of external customers, revenue, or a public launch date. What can be said honestly is the following.
What exists today
- A working system, not a slide deck The product is under active development. It has been used on the founder’s own design projects.
- Culverts, including box-culvert rebar drawings Culvert design and box-culvert reinforcement drawings are a current, concrete capability of the system.
- Adapters into existing design tools Adapters are in place so the system can drive the industry-standard design environments already used on highway projects.
The direction of travel
- From culverts toward bridges The system is being built first around culverts, then toward bridges and pile foundations, and later a fuller AI design workbench. That is a development path, not a dated timetable.
- Stay inside the native tools The preference is to use what those design environments can do natively, and to treat the design platform as the source that drawings and quantities must agree with.
- Codes the founder works in Design experience and kernel work sit in the British, Chinese and Eurocode tradition familiar on highway projects — including BS 5400 / BD 37, JTG and the Eurocodes — with rules encoded so a number can be traced to its clause.
Why us
Built by a practicing bridge and hydraulics engineer.
Tao Chen (Alan Chen) is the founder of SpanStruct. He is a bridge and hydraulics engineer with about ten years of design experience, based in Abuja, Nigeria. He works with British, Chinese and Eurocode design standards, and with the hydraulic and structural tools used on highway projects.
He holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Civil Engineering from Wuhan University of Science and Technology (2016). Project experience includes the New Save River Bridge in Mozambique and the Keffi–Makurdi Road in Nigeria.
The system is being developed in his own name, and proven on his own project work, rather than as a tool proposed from outside the discipline.
Market
Highway design still depends on skilled people doing repeatable work by hand.
The opportunity, as we see it, is qualitative rather than a market-size claim. Design offices already pay for industry-standard design and analysis software, and already employ engineers who know those tools. What is still scarce is a reliable way to take a design change from intent through the model, the sheets, the calculations and the quantities without starting again by hand. SpanStruct is being built for that gap — especially on road and bridge work in markets that design to British, European or similar highway practice.
Invest or partner
Talk to us about investing or partnering.
If you are an investor or a potential partner and want to understand the system in more depth, write to Tao Chen. This is an early-stage product, and we would rather discuss it directly than over-claim it on a website.
Email tao@spanstruct.net