# HSC Pipeline Engineering: building an engineering knowledge base with RAG AI

- Date: 2026-03-20
- Who: HSC Pipeline Engineering (AISG LADP participating company) · AI Singapore
- Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmPl5_pW5Lg
- sgai: https://sgai.md/videos/v039/
- License: sgai-authored content (summaries, translations, analysis) is CC BY 4.0 — attribute and link to sgai.md. Verbatim source text (Hansard, speeches, transcripts, policy documents) remains © its original rights holders and is reproduced for reference only. Terms: https://github.com/meltflake/sgai/blob/main/DATA-LICENSE.md

## Why it matters

A 3-day wait compressed to instant response proves that AISG LADP can land RAG on the front lines of traditional civil engineering, rather than remaining confined to tech company pilots

## Summary

Through the AISG LADP programme, HSC Pipeline built a locally deployed RAG AI knowledge base, breaking down engineering-knowledge silos and improving decision-making efficiency.

## Key points

- HSC Pipeline lays gas, water, district cooling, power and telecom utilities; site queries used to wait 3 days for a senior PM to respond.
- Through AISG's LADP, HSC built an on-premise RAG AI assistant accessible only over the company intranet.
- The AI Playbook returns accurate answers with cited sources, cutting delays that previously triggered complaints, demerit points and lost tenders.

## Full text

© AI Singapore — reproduced for reference only.

HSC is a civil engineering company that does infrastructure for the nation. We provide services to lay various types of utilities like gas, water, district cooling, power cables and telecom. Our staff actually face a large variety of problems on a day-to-day basis. Of course, we have the option of uh asking the more senior project managers or the project managers on what is the resolutions to such issue. But due to clashing schedules, this often can take up to 3 days to resolve even a minor issue. So when issues start to snowball, this have larger implications to the project. Complaints from the public will actually damage HSC's reputation as a reliable civil engineering company. If the field tasks are not completed, they will snowballs into delay and causing the project timeline to sleep.

Clients then will impose demerit points or fines and this will affect our ability to complete the current projects and also our future tenders. Through the LAP, we built a secure onremise RAG enabled AI assistant that is only accessed through the company's internet. It will take in our documents and use this context to provide funline support to staff queries. It gives accurate enough answers and site sources for traceability back to what was used to arrive at these responses. The AI playbook brings up the most relevant document pages for any scenario at hand. There is less ambiguity regarding whether a cost of action is applicable in the situation. Project teams spend a lot less time looking for answers and instead can refocus to quickly and accurately resolve issues.

This has translated to significant time and cost savings for our timelines. We've tested the AI playbook with our project teams and the response has been largely positive. We used the AI playbook as a talking point in our company's internal AI literacy campaign. We used it to emphasize the importance of business confidentiality and the steps to take to protect our trade secrets, sensitive information and business critical documents. HC is a construction company. We lack expertise on how to design, build and manage AI tools. AISG's LAP provided training and consultation to overcome this shortfalls. Furthermore, AISG's LAP gave us access to professional Gen AI models and case studies. This enabled us to quickly build and test prototypes that eventually led to the AI playbook.

When the playbook was able to consistently and accurately answer our questions on any projects, that was the moment AI changed from a lofty aspiration for us to something more concrete and attainable. Our experience working with the AISG team has been very good. They are well versed in applying AI to use cases and extracting business value from it. Whenever we had questions or stumbled in our app development, they have been supportive and provided much needed knowledge on how to address our various challenges. ESG's LAP is a cost-effective program to quickly pick up the basics of AI app development and drive business value from lowhanging fruits in any company on the front of digital automation. HSC highly recommends other companies to register for the program to jumpstart their AI journeys.