Professor Nawal K. Prinja
BTech(Hons), MSc, PhD, DEng, FIMechE
Plenary Title: Smart Engineering: AI for Design, Compliance, and Safety Assurance
Abstract: This presentation examines how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming engineering practice in safety-critical industries. It highlights the increasing complexity of design codes, regulatory requirements, and lifecycle knowledge management, and argues that traditional document-based approaches, particularly static PDFs, are no longer sufficient.
The concept of machine-readable standards is introduced as a foundational enabler for AI-driven engineering. By structuring codes and standards into interoperable, clause-level data, engineers can achieve real-time compliance verification, enhanced traceability, and seamless integration with digital twins and model-based systems engineering frameworks.
Practical applications of AI are discussed, including automated requirements extraction, intelligent code compliance checking, change impact analysis, and AI-assisted development of safety cases. The role of cognitive search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) in delivering trustworthy and traceable insights is also examined. Furthermore, the presentation outlines key innovations required to develop knowledge graphs that support informed decision-making in critical engineering contexts.
The presentation concludes with a call for standards organisations to lead the transition from document-centric practices to data-driven, AI-enabled engineering.
Biography: Professor Nawal Prinja has 45 years of academic and industrial experience in the nuclear civil and defence sectors. He retired as the Technology Director of Amentum previously Jacobs and held a position of Honorary Professor at four British universities. He has been on United Nations's IAEA missions to China, South Africa, UAE, Spain and Poland and is a member of their AI Working Group. He was appointed as an advisor to the UK Government to help formulate their long-term R&D strategy for nuclear industry. He participates in a number of international committees and chairs Senior Industry Advisory Panel of the Generation IV International Forum and sits on World Nuclear Association's CORDEL Steering Committee working on common approaches to nuclear safety, design and licensing for international deployment of nuclear power stations. In his book How To Use FEA with Structural and Pressure Vessel Design Codes and Standards, he highlighted the transformative impact of digital technologies on future engineering design processes.