AI Road Planning Tools for Smarter Communities
Avenew wanted to change how communities plan road maintenance. Together, we built AI-enabled tools that help city leaders save time, spend wisely, and keep roads safer.
Opportunity
City leaders spent hours creating road plans by hand. Avenew needed AI-enabled tools to save time, stretch budgets, and improve road quality.
Services
Results
- Safer, smoother roads without higher taxes
- More road projects from the same budget
- 5-year maintenance plans in seconds
- Data science powering stronger communities
Client
Fueling the Future of Road Maintenance
Avenew is a startup reshaping road maintenance planning. Their software empowers municipalities to generate optimized, data-driven road treatment plans that save time and budget while improving road quality.
About Avenew
Industry
Construction
Founded
2021
Market
United States
Headquarters
Indianapolis, IN
Opportunity
Manual Planning Slowed Cities Down
City engineers across Indiana were spending hours compiling road maintenance plans by hand. Leaders wanted a better way, a tool that could take in all the data, suggest strategies, and help them focus on the bigger picture.
The goal was simple but ambitious:
- Save time so city officials could spend less effort on reports.
- Stretch budgets so every tax dollar has more impact.
- Improve road quality so communities get safer, smoother streets without higher costs.
Avenew envisioned an AI-enabled tool that would turn raw data into actionable plans, helping local governments deliver better results for their citizens. To bring that vision to life, they needed a partner who could test the idea, validate the market, and guide a phased path forward.
What We Did
Artificial Intelligence
Automated Optimization
Data Science
Generative Research
Machine Learning
Product Design
Product Thinking
Strategy & Innovation
Solution
Devising a phase-one solution approach.
SEP partnered with Avenew to explore whether AI could realistically solve this challenge — and how to build it in a way cities would actually use.
We began with a five-day workshop to uncover assumptions, model value creation, and define what success could look like. This phase was about testing feasibility on two fronts: Could AI generate useful road plans, and would there be a market for this type of tool?
Developing a Tech-Enabled Service
Avenew’s long-term vision was a SaaS product, but our discovery findings showed that the best first step was a tech-enabled service. SEP built an AI-enabled desktop application that let city leaders test the concept with a smaller initial investment.
The application used pruning and heuristic techniques to evaluate vast amounts of road degradation and budget data. It then presented multiple optimized maintenance strategies through an intuitive interface — giving leaders actionable plans within seconds.
User-Centered Design
To ensure adoption, our designers met with mayors and city engineers across the state. We tested mockups, studied workflows, and refined the interface so the software would feel familiar and easy to learn. The aim was to build trust and reduce friction for first-time users.
SaaS Prototyping
In parallel, SEP created a minimalist React single-page application to demonstrate the SaaS delivery model. The prototype showed how future users could invoke the optimizer online and download optimized plans instantly — a critical step toward scaling Avenew’s long-term vision.
Tech Stack
AWS
C#
Python
Results
Making Every Tax Dollar Go Further
With SEP’s guidance, Avenew proved that AI could transform how cities plan and budget for road maintenance. The optimizer generated five-year treatment plans in seconds, freeing leaders from manual reporting. More importantly, it showed that communities could raise road ratings without raising budgets — stretching every tax dollar further and delivering safer, smoother streets for citizens.
5-year maintenance plans in seconds
Higher road ratings with same budgets
Tax dollars used more effectively
Proof of concept validated statewide
Ongoing partnership to scale SaaS vision