Design and Integrate Smart Infrastructure Systems
Overview
This standard defines the competencies required to design and integrate smart infrastructure systems that combine physical infrastructure with digital technologies. It covers engaging stakeholders to gather user and system requirements, developing scalable and interoperable designs, selecting appropriate technologies, and confirming that the resulting infrastructure meets functional, sustainability, and regulatory expectations.
Professionals applying this standard contribute to the delivery of resilient and future-ready infrastructure across sectors including energy, transport, construction, and utilities. They play a key role in supporting decarbonisation targets, improving public service delivery, and driving innovation through digital transformation.
This standard is intended for infrastructure professionals responsible for planning and designing integrated smart systems, including engineers, system architects, and infrastructure consultants.
Performance criteria
You must be able to:
- Confirm user, technical, environmental, accessibility and regulatory requirements for smart infrastructure systems through stakeholder consultation and data gathering.
- Produce infrastructure design specifications that integrate digital technologies into physical systems, incorporating resilience, interoperability, and sustainability considerations.
- Select and evaluate smart infrastructure technologies, including IoT devices, sensor networks, digital twins, edge computing platforms, and connectivity standards in line with organisational requirements .
- How AI, machine learning and analytics support optimisation, prediction, and automated decision-making in smart infrastructure systems.
- Design scalable system architectures that enable integration of real-time data flows, automation functions, and performance monitoring.
- Apply relevant data exchange, control, and interoperability standards in the design of smart infrastructure systems.
- Assess and document the risks associated with system complexity, integration dependencies, and data infrastructure vulnerabilities in line with organisational procedures.
- Collaborate with engineering, IT, sustainability, and regulatory stakeholders to validate system design and implementation feasibility.
- Confirm that smart infrastructure design meets safety, compliance, cybersecurity, and environmental performance requirements.
- Produce technical documentation, models, and diagrams to support handover to implementation and operations teams.
- Contribute to design reviews, pilot testing, and continuous improvement of smart infrastructure architecture in line with organisational requirements.
Knowledge and Understanding
You need to know and understand:
- Principles of smart infrastructure system design and digital-physical integration.
- Key technologies for smart infrastructure, including IoT devices, edge and fog computing, data acquisition systems, digital twins, control networks and AI.
- System architecture approaches for scalable, resilient, and interoperable infrastructure (including layered, distributed, modular).
- Principles of semantic interoperability, including the use of shared data models, vocabularies, ontologies, and schema standards.
- Interoperability and data standards relevant to smart infrastructure.
- Approaches to requirements gathering, stakeholder engagement, and validation of functional and operational needs.
- Environmental and sustainability frameworks relevant to infrastructure design (including net-zero principles, energy lifecycle analysis and circular economy standards).
- Risk modelling and assessment techniques to inform resilience planning for infrastructure projects, including technical, operational, cybersecurity, and data risks.
- Principles of smart infrastructure data governance and data lifecycle management, including data lineage, retention, provenance, and quality assurance.
- Methods for documenting and visualising infrastructure design.
- Safety, regulatory, accessibility and ethical compliance considerations for inclusive infrastructure design.
- Emerging trends and innovations in smart infrastructure.