Structural Intelligence Podcast4 Sep 2025

S1E6 - Inside Civils.ai: Explore Stevan Lukic’s Leap from Engineer to Tech Founder long before the AI hype

How does a civil engineer go from designing tunnels to building an AI startup?

In this episode of The Structural Intelligence Podcast, Owen Keenan interviews Stevan Lukic, founder and CEO of Civils.ai a startup transforming how engineering teams use AI to extract data from construction documents. Before ChatGPT, before the hype, Stevan was already teaching himself to code and building automation tools for geotechnical logs, CAD drawings, and pre-construction workflows.

They explore the mindset shift from consultant to founder, the real challenges of launching a construction tech startup, and why the future of engineering is built on data, not just drawings.

⏱ Timestamps:
00:00:00 – Before the AI hype: Stevan's vision for engineering00:02:00 – From tunnels to tech founder: Stevan's journey00:06:00 – Lessons from engineering vs startup culture00:09:40 – Teaching himself to code and founding Civils.ai00:15:00 – The startup journey: accelerators, funding, and product fit00:19:50 – What Civils.ai does solving problems trapped in PDFs00:26:00 – Extracting data from drawings the holy grail of construction AI00:29:00 – Civils.ai vs ChatGPT why specialized tools matter00:33:00 – Barriers to AI adoption in engineering00:42:00 – The future of engineers in the AI era

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Host & Links

LinkedIn: Owen Keenan
Spotify: Structural Intelligence Podcast
YouTube: @Structural-Intelligence
VoiceInspect.ai: www.voiceinspect.ai

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