About this episode

Peggy Smedley discusses the Model Context Protocol with Francois Valois, focusing on AI's role in engineering and infrastructure design.

What does it take to make AI reliable enough to design a bridge? Peggy Smedley sits down with Francois Valois, senior vice president of Bentley Open Applications at Bentley Systems, to unpack the MCP (model context protocol — an open, agnostic standard that connects AI agents to deterministic engineering tools like STAAD and MicroStation ensuring trust, validation, and accountability in engineering workflows. They explore why generative AI alone needs to be more trustworthy for infrastructure design, how MCP bridges the gap between non-deterministic LLMs (large language models) and precise calculation engines, and what Bentley's open-source strategy means for the future of connected-infrastructure data. Topics covered: What MCP is and why Anthropic invented it Why "90% accurate" isn't acceptable in engineering How STAAD and MicroStation are now AI-accessible via MCP The role of structured data (and dark data) in AI workflows How to start experimenting with AI agents in your firm The future of the engineer in an AI-augmented world infrastructure.ai | connectedworld.com | peggysmedleyshow.com

People in this episode

Host: Peggy Smedley

Guest: Francois Valois

Topics covered

• AI reliability
• engineering workflows
• model context protocol
• generative AI
• infrastructure design
• open-source strategy

Keywords

• Model Context Protocol
• AI agents
• engineering tools
• trust and validation
• infrastructure data
• dark data
• AI workflows

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Bentley Systems, Anthropic

Products: STAAD, MicroStation

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