EngAige

Client Context

A leading energy project proponent faced lengthy and complex environmental permitting requirements for an onshore infrastructure project. Preparing the project scoping report manually was time-intensive, required multiple revisions, and carried high regulatory risk; delays could cost millions and threaten project timelines.

Key Metrics and Impact

• Faster Report Creation: In collaboration with the consultant team, EngAige completed the first draft in three days, representing an 80–85% faster turnaround compared with the typical 2–3-week preparation period for this type of report.
• Productivity Gains: By producing the draft report in three days, we freed up approximately 50%, or the equivalent of 60–90 working hours, of the lead consultant’s capacity, enabling a stronger focus on QA and review.
• Higher Accuracy: For this report, an experienced consultant would typically produce a first draft with approximately 60% accuracy. Using EngAige’s approach, the initial draft reached close to 70% accuracy, representing a major uplift in quality at the earliest stage of report development.
• Improved Traceability and Quality: Around 70% of the final submitted report was developed from EngAige’s AI-generated platform’s content. This provided a clear and consistent foundation from draft to submission, strengthening traceability, reducing rework, and improving overall quality assurance across the permitting process.

The Challenge

Recent data from Australia’s Mining and Critical Minerals Sector highlights the scale of the permitting challenge:

• $68 billion in estimated annual lost investment, due to long lead times.
• 16-year average development timeline for a new mine.
• Regulatory complexity and duplication significantly slowing progress.
• Investment shifting toward South-East Asia and the United States, where approval pathways are faster and more predictable.

These impacts are not limited to mining, they reflect systematic issues also affecting large-scale energy, renewables, and infrastructure projects.

For this client, manually preparing scoping reports was a key bottleneck. Gathering baseline data, aligning with compliance frameworks, and coordinating specialist inputs often required months; delaying project milestones and diverting expert time from higher-value analysis.

The Solution

EngAige delivered a tailored, intelligence-enabled permitting solution that significantly accelerated the client’s research and drafting process. The approach modernised the workflow, integrated key datasets, and embedded quality assurance from the very first draft.

Solution Components:

• Integrated Technical and Environmental Data Capture: Brought together technical, environmental and regulatory datasets to streamline research, remove duplication and provide a consistent, defensible evidence base.
• Built-In Regulatory and Environmental Logic: Applied structured logic aligned with EPBC, EP&A and SSI requirements, ensuring drafts were regulator-ready and consistent from the outset.
• Structured Templates for Rapid Drafting: Used clear, standardised templates to guide content development, improve clarity and maintain alignment across all sections of the report.
• Collaborative AI-Supported Drafting: Combined AI-generated content with expert consultant oversight to lift accuracy, strengthen defensibility and reduce the need for rework.

This approach streamlined the scoping-report stage of the permitting lifecycle, reduced uncertainty in early inputs, and enabled the rapid production of a submission-ready draft.

Why It Matters

According to recent data from the Mining and Critical Minerals Sector, delays in environmental approvals are costing Australia tens of billions of dollars annually in lost investment. These impacts extend across industries, raising costs, weakening global competitiveness, and slow progress on major energy transition, infrastructure, and resource projects.

EngAige addresses these challenges by:

• accelerating progress through regulatory decision gates
• improving accuracy, defensibility, and consistency
• enhancing visibility and accountability, and
• freeing specialists to focus on high-value analysis and strategy.

Our technology amplifies expertise, freeing specialists to focus on what matters most: solving complex problems, meeting compliance requirements, and delivering high-quality, regulator-ready outcomes.