by Charles Li, Senior Engineer / AI Working Group Lead
ATC Williams has undergone many technology transitions over the past 45 years. When our industry moved from hand calculations to numerical modelling, the firms that benefited most from the software also rebuilt their workflows, review practices and training to reflect the new way of working.
The integration of Artificial Intelligence is a similar moment in time, and the same lesson applies that the technology is only part of the transition.
My Interest in AI
As a child, I was fascinated by sci-fi movies and stories featuring intelligent robots, virtual worlds, and augmented reality. Blade Runner 2049 remains one of my favourite films because it examines identity, consciousness, and the ethics of creating artificial beings. What’s exciting to me now is that many of the ideas that once seemed futuristic are becoming real-world technologies we can use in our everyday work and lives.
When our Chief Technical Officer, Kim Morrison, asked me to take over leadership of ATCW’s AI Working Group, I accepted the role, knowing the real work would not be promoting AI tools but asking hard questions about how to implement responsible and sustainable use of AI in everyday work.
ATCW’s AI Implementation Strategy
Real AI implementation at ATCW rests on three core foundations:
- Leadership alignment on AI – the messages staff receive must be consistent and clear
- A strong governance framework that enables the redesign of how work is done across our disciplines
- Training that builds AI literacy for all staff, not just enthusiasts
When these three are in place, return on investment ceases to be a licence-utilisation statistic and becomes visible in the work itself.
Closing the Gap between Policy and Practice
Like most firms, we have an AI policy that we continually revisit and refine. A policy sets out what is and is not permitted. Practice determines what happens and how.
Our Working Group exists to close that gap by addressing three key areas that are consistently raised across our organisation and the wider industry.
- Visibility
AI use should happen in the open. Bringing the conversation into the light is the first step to managing it well. - Accountability
Our engineers and scientists will review every AI-assisted output with the same rigour we would apply to any calculation or design. - Sustainability
Early-career engineers and scientists are valued as the next generation and must be kept inside the engineering learning loop to preserve their essential career developmental pathways.
The AI Working Group
The AI Working Group is sponsored by Kim Morrison, CTO, and mentored by Sam Wijayasinha, IT Manager. It brings together staff across the company who are interested in AI. Membership is flexible and project-based, allowing staff to contribute where their interests and expertise align. The most recent team project is the ATCW Prompt Library, a collaborative effort with contributions from Abhi Singh, Nathan Podlich and Jose Sanchez.
I am grateful to Kim Morrison for sponsoring this role and supporting the AI Working Group’s agenda. Many AI programs lack this kind of leadership support, which is why ours can make the transition from policy to practice with greater uptake.
Our Recent Initiatives
- The AI Prompt Library
The prompt library is a browsable and searchable set of prompts based on real work at ATCW. This is a learning and enablement tool, inspiring staff to write better prompts following the GCSE (Goal, Context, Source and Expectation) prompt framework. The AI Prompt Library is the first training program that the working group developed for staff to build their AI literacy. - The ATCW AI Hub
The Hub is a central place to access everything AI, including approved tools, policy, training resources and current pilots. It makes AI visibility practical and removes ambiguity about what is endorsed. - The Knowledge Lake
An ambitious initiative currently under evaluation. ATC Williams has 45 years of successful project knowledge across reports, designs, laboratory testing, analyses and evaluations. Using AI-powered retrieval, we are working to make that knowledge searchable and conversational. The goal is for an engineer beginning a study to draw on decades of firm precedent, with built-in access controls and source citations. This is where AI goes beyond being a productivity tool and starts compounding institutional knowledge.
Our AI Vision
ATCW is trusted with high-consequence decisions informed by the skills of experienced engineers, scientists and technicians. Our bespoke approach to AI will provide our people with tools to better engage with our historical data when producing quality solutions across the project lifecycle.
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