The preparation time and lifecycle of road and rail projects can be up to 20 years. Because of this long timeframe, quality assurance in the infrastructure sector is exceptionally demanding risk management: over the years, key project personnel change, information systems are updated, and boundary conditions are refined multiple times. If critical information is lost or design quality assurance fails, the consequences are visible directly on the construction site—often in the form of million-euro extra bills and years of delays.
At Nexpert, we have worked for three years (2024–2026) with public administration and infrastructure experts to develop uniform, practical models for design self-delivery and quality assurance. Now the project is taking the next step: moving from manual spreadsheets towards digital automation and AI-assisted cross-checking.
A three-year development journey: From individual practices to unified templates (2024–2026)
In infrastructure design, a long-recognized challenge was that service providers' self-delivery practices varied greatly. Some operators performed extremely detailed checks, while at other times the client was provided with only a signed confirmation that the check had been carried out.
This variation began to be narrowed down in a broad co-development project:
- 2024 – Current state analysis and engagement: The work began with an assessment of the current state regarding general planning, road planning, and railway planning. Project managers and designers from the client and the Centres for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment (ELY Centres) were broadly involved in the project.
- 2025 – Excel templates and initial pilots: Excel templates containing the minimum requirements for the self-handover of design were drafted. The Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency (Väylävirasto) introduced these standardized templates for new projects starting in February 2025. Feedback was gathered from the initial field pilots to serve as a basis for further development.
- 2026 – Construction Design and Interfaces: Pilots and the version control of Excel templates have been continued. In autumn 2026, development work will expand to the construction design model template. At the same time, an important technical milestone has been reached: The first version of the API is now available.
Why did modeling start with spreadsheets? Heavy and expensive coding cycles were avoided by first ensuring the ”correct way of operating” in Excel before technical implementation.
Why is design quality assurance a million-dollar question?
The basic rule of infrastructure construction is harsh: Correcting an error on the drawing board costs a fraction of what it costs to fix it on the construction site.
When examining Finnish infrastructure megaprojects, the importance of quality assurance and the completeness of baseline data is emphasized in euros:
- Ring Rail Line tunnel (Vantaa): Gaps in the site investigations and bedrock baseline data led to extensive special structures mid-implementation. The design changes and delay caused over 50 million euros in additional costs.
- West Metro systems (Espoo/Helsinki): During the implementation phase, the design of the metro automation and equipment environment encountered compatibility issues. Modifications to platforms and ventilation in the middle of construction inflated the costs of Phase 1 by hundreds of millions of euros.
- Logomo Bridge (Turku): Design errors regarding wind loads and load-bearing capacity forced the demolition of already constructed parts on the construction site. The project's budget more than doubled, and the arbitration court ordered the engineering firm to pay the city over 6 million euros in damages for gross negligence.
Effective quality assurance and self-handover are not administrative bureaucracy, but direct risk management. They bring to projects financial savings preventing demolition work, they guarantee of schedule reliability and ensure of structural safety.
Future: From manual Excel checking to AI-assisted automation
Although Excel-based template documents have brought much-needed consistency to the infrastructure sector, manual review always involves human risk. In tight project schedules and a jungle of hundreds of pages of guidelines, the human eye can easily miss a contradiction between the plans and the client's requirements.
The next step in digitalization is not just an electronic form, but intelligent cross-checking:
- Automated requirement comparison: Artificial intelligence reads the project's baseline data, authority guidelines, and quality assurance checkpoints, and compares them against the design documents.
- Flagging conflicts and gaps: The system automatically detects if the plan is missing a critical quality check or if the dimensioning deviates from the given boundary conditions.
- Releasing expert time: Routine manual cross-checking is reduced, which saves experts' time for evaluating demanding technical solutions.
Nextpert's Solution – We are looking for pilot customers for automation!
At Nexpert, we have taken the development of design quality assurance to a new phase. Based on the lessons learned from the three-year project, we have built on the test automation of the first API and mock-up version.
Our solution enables the seamless integration of quality assurance data with other information systems and lays the foundation for AI-assisted cross-checking of designs.
Do you want to be involved in shaping the future of quality assurance in the infrastructure sector?
We are now looking for open-minded pilot customers – both clients and design agencies – to test and further develop quality assurance automation with us.
👉 Did you get interested? Contact our team or schedule a short presentation with us, and together we will see how quality assurance can be moved into the era of AI in your projects!
💡 This blog post serves as background and in-depth material for our LinkedIn theme week this week, where we discuss infrastructure construction quality assurance, the costs of design errors, and new digital tools in the industry.
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