Engineering process plants as code in the age of agentic AI

Abstract

Agentic artificial intelligence (AI) could one day shorten process plant engineering from years to weeks. Today, however, plant information is scattered across documents and tools and must be carried between them by hand, so an AI agent placed into current workflows inherits the same silos. In this Comment, we argue for Plant-as-Code: defining the engineering of a plant as a version-controlled collection of machine-readable files that follow, where possible, existing standards such as DEXPI and IFC. On this foundation, Design-Ops extends DevOps principles to plant engineering, linking every engineering item to the information it derives from and replacing manual checking with automated tests. Agents can then coordinate routine work across disciplines while deterministic tools perform the calculations. Verification sets the pace: agents propose, tools check, and engineers review and authorize every change. We outline the risks of this shift and the research, industry and policy actions it requires.