Oxford-based AI specialists Mind Foundry have written a thought piece aboutAI-powered infrastructure inspections for local authorities and how they can use the power of artificial intelligence to build a comprehensive view of a structure’s health.
There are approximately 246,000 miles of road and 80,904 bridges in the UK, and each of these individual assets requires monitoring, maintenance, and management to keep them operational. This management typically falls under the remit of 317 local authorities.
When you look at the current state of the UK’s infrastructure, it’s abundantly clear that local authorities are facing an uphill battle in achieving effective infrastructure management, says Tom Bartley, General Manager of Civil Infrastructure at Mind Foundry.
The current asset condition crisis
The RAC Foundation has found that 4% of the UK’s bridges are “substandard”, meaning they cannot carry the heaviest vehicles. This has significant ramifications for freight, agriculture and overall network efficiency. Meanwhile, the 2025 ALARM survey reports that 52% of the local road network has less than 15 years of structural life remaining, with 17% of the road network reported to be in “poor condition”.
The financial repercussions of our ageing infrastructure are also staggering. It’s estimated that addressing the backlog of substandard bridges would cost £6.8 billion. For the road network, £16.81 billion would be needed to bring it up to its ‘ideal’ conditions, work that would take 12 years to complete.
Although local authorities are aware of this problem, their ability to address it is limited on many fronts. Over the last year, highway maintenance budgets in England and Wales experienced a real-terms cut of 4.1%. Although authorities can apply for additional funding, their proposals must be supported by precise and understandable structural health data. However, several factors are impeding these efforts.
The impact of legacy systems
Decades of inspections have yielded a wealth of historical information on structures in offices nationwide. However, this data is scattered across different formats, from handwritten notes and printed documents to digital files featuring high-res imagery and video. Simply collecting this information is a challenge, let alone interpreting it to understand an asset’s current condition and history. Furthermore, the lack of consistent data collection makes it difficult for asset managers to zoom out and compare assets at the portfolio level to identify which need their immediate attention.
Ultimately, this creates an incomplete picture of asset health at both individual and portfolio levels. For local authorities to effectively communicate the need for increased funding, they must present evidence of deteriorating assets accurately and explain why now is the optimal moment for intervention. The better the understanding, the more compelling the case for funding, but without knowing which assets need attention, local authorities can’t justify funding requests to budget decision-makers.
Producing comprehensive inspection data
One of the most straightforward ways to address this problem is to prioritise inspection-level data collection. If the data captured is comprehensive, consistent, and of high quality, it will enhance asset owners’ understanding of structural health and pave the way for AI-powered condition intelligence.
Tools such as Mind Foundry’s Windward look to quantify the nature and rates of asset deterioration over time. Asset condition information powers explainable machine learning models, which can help ensure reliability, cut costs, and maintain operations.
However, this process begins with the data collection. Windward puts AI directly into inspectors’ hands, enabling them to accurately capture high-quality images and log condition notes to identify, tag and locate structural defects. This data directly contributes to assessing the asset’s overall health.
The tool also includes a desktop application, where images, notes, and defect changes can be combined into data-rich reports that are easy to analyse and interrogate. Having all high-quality data at hand gives asset owners a holistic view of an asset’s condition and its deterioration over time.
Cultivating this complete understanding can provide the foundation for a concerted effort to address the UK’s condition crisis. Given the scale and complexity of the infrastructure sector, partnership is essential, as no single organisation can resolve the issues alone. This is why it’s increasingly critical for local authorities, central governments, infrastructure consultancies, and innovative SMEs to work together.
Effective collaboration enables the industry to build solutions far beyond individual capacity, yet actual progress begins only when local authorities understand the core problem.
How would this benefit local authorities?
Currently, asset management is based on a clear grading system. Each asset – whether a bridge, tunnel or a road – is given an overall condition score that aggregates the severity and extent of all detected defects according to standardised frameworks. Assets are ranked from worst to best with the help of decision support tools, allowing engineers to systematically address deficiencies by starting with the lowest-performing assets.
While these systems were developed to provide a national, consistent, condition-based approach to structural asset management, they do have inherent limitations. Substantial defects are missed because the process is focused on the worst overall asset; a defect that is extremely serious but occurs on an otherwise “healthier” asset can be overlooked.
It is also not forward-looking, as the current system doesn’t account for how things may change over time. For example, a defect that could be fixed today for £1,000 might not get attention because the overall asset doesn’t rank badly enough. But if left unaddressed, it could escalate to a £10,000 repair next year or lead to the closure of a bridge.
Not only are there direct repair costs, but the impact of ageing assets also imposes broader economic costs on local economies. Our civil infrastructure is critical to the connectivity and mobility of our society and economies, with networks facilitating the movement of people, goods, and services, all of which directly impact the UK’s productivity and quality of life.
Communication is a key solution to this problem. Asset engineers must be able to explain these risks to decision-makers, funders, and stakeholders in ways that resonate with each group. This means making the risks more visible, showing the possible consequences of inaction, and enabling seamless communication between the people who work day-to-day with the assets and those who hold the purse strings.
By capturing data with the reliable quality and consistency required for accurate defect assessment, local authorities can begin to build a comprehensive view of a structure’s health. This will enable more efficient resource allocation and prioritisation of maintenance.
Armed with a new wealth of information, local authorities can submit strong, evidence-based funding requests at a time when budgets are strained and pressure to make accurate decisions is at an all-time high.
(Pics: Yay Images; Mind Foundry)
