Business Enquirer speaks with Daniel Broekhove of Screening Eagle about AI, digital twins, and the future of keeping bridges, roads and buildings safe.
Screening Eagle’s mission statement is a deceptively simple one: protect the built world.
But behind that phrase lies a much bigger shift taking place across the infrastructure inspection industry, one that is moving from manual, one-off measurements towards connected, data-driven asset management.
Business Enquirer sat down with Daniel Broekhove to unpack what that shift looks like in practice, and where the company is headed next.
From a Single Measurement to a Connected Ecosystem
For Broekhove, “protecting the built world” starts with a practical problem: helping the owners of buildings, bridges, roads, tunnels and utilities make better decisions about assets that are ageing and enormously expensive to maintain or replace.
“That infrastructure is ageing,” he explains. “The challenge is really understanding the condition of all of those assets accurately, in order to maintain it safely and efficiently.”
That philosophy has shaped Screening Eagle’s strategy in a very specific way.
Rather than developing standalone measurement devices, the company has focused on bringing sensors, software and data together into a single inspection ecosystem.
“We’re increasingly focused on how data is captured, interpreted and visualised to help end users make informed decisions,” Broekhove says, pointing to the company’s long history in non-destructive testing and its more recent investment in cloud, AI and robotics capabilities.
This integration, he argues, is fundamental to moving customers away from fragmented, manual inspection workflows, where an inspector might collect data with one instrument, process it in separate software, and then compile a report in Word or Excel, towards a genuinely holistic approach.
“The real opportunity comes when those pieces are connected,” he says.
“A sensor provides the measurement, our software turns that measurement into useful information, and our cloud-based data allows that information to become part of the asset’s long-term digital record.”
The result, he says, is a shift in the fundamental question being asked, from “what did we find during this inspection?” to “how is this asset changing over time, and what should we do about it?”
Concrete Evidence for De-Risking Commercial Real Estate
In commercial real estate and infrastructure, value is traditionally measured in square footage, occupancy rates and capitalisation yields.
Structures prime for repurposing, such as an office block or healthcare facility, may appear ready for reuse simply based on their visual appearance. However, some of the highest financial risks to an asset lie out of sight within the structure itself.
Inside the concrete, there is an unknown matrix of post-tension cables, reinforcement, conduit and utility lines. All of this contributes to the number of unknown variables capable of sinking a project’s ROI.
As the modern built environment undergoes a structural shift driven by renovations and conversions, visibility beneath the concrete surface is becoming a core financial necessity.
Finding What’s Inside the Concrete Before Building Reuse
The push towards building reuse is reshaping commercial real estate.
Converting underutilised office buildings into high-density residential apartments, boutique hotels or life-science laboratories offers developers a faster route to market and a smaller carbon footprint than ground-up construction.
However, these transformations inevitably run into a common obstacle: decades-old structures rarely possess accurate as-built records.
Unrecorded adjustments and misplaced documentation force developers to rely on guesswork. Coring a concrete slab to route plumbing or installing HVAC shafts becomes a high-stakes endeavour, with costly accidental hits of post-tension cables or live electrical wires.
To protect capital and keep timelines intact, developers must establish an accurate structural baseline before heavy equipment ever arrives on site.
The most effective way to find out what is hidden in the concrete is with Ground Penetrating Radar, or GPR.
GPR is a non-destructive testing technology used for concrete investigation.
Saving Time and Budget Through Accurate As-Built Records
Construction rework accounts for a substantial percentage of budget overruns.
The formula for avoiding rework is straightforward: using accurate data as concrete evidence to plan better, build better and manage better.
Replacing outdated records with verified as-built documentation, including GPR data, is an effective way to prevent rework and protect margins.
Unlike static, historical design drawings that rarely reflect field changes, high-resolution GPR scans map the exact layout and depth of subsurface elements, including rebar grids, post-tension cables and embedded conduits, in real time.
By digitising and documenting these scan results into verified as-built records before work begins, field teams gain immediate clarity on hidden hazards.
Identifying structural elements before striking them eliminates catastrophic utility strikes, avoids field delays and ensures layout decisions are made using true site conditions rather than educated guesses.
Safe Coring and Drilling in Busy Commercial Buildings
Executing complex renovations within operational facilities, such as active hospitals, data centres, corporate headquarters, warehouses or high-end retail environments, magnifies the operational stakes.
In these settings, construction cannot interfere with daily business.
Renovations in high-stakes environments often occur overnight or during tight operational windows. To maintain continuous operations, project managers rely on advanced, non-destructive testing technologies.
Compact, wireless hardware such as handheld GPR systems enables technicians to silently scan concrete slabs in active spaces without requiring floor evacuations or intrusive staging.
Nationwide scanning service company GPRS provides concrete scanning and utility locating services using advanced technologies including a fleet of Proceq Ground Penetrating Radars.
GPRS technicians map what is below concrete in occupied spaces, from busy medical facilities to active commercial centres, to identify safe coring and drilling locations, create as-builts, detect potential issues before they happen and prevent delays.
This enables contractors to drill with greater confidence while helping operations remain on schedule.
Birth Certificates and Predictive Maintenance for Infrastructure
As infrastructure becomes more complex, the industry’s approach to asset lifecycle management is evolving.
When new infrastructure is commissioned today, a critical question remains: is anyone digitising its initial structural baseline?
Creating a dynamic “birth certificate” for newly constructed assets, mapping structural elements, conduit runs and material baselines from day one, establishes a reference standard for the building’s entire lifecycle.
That model can be viewed in three stages:
- Asset Birth Record – a digital baseline for tracking.
- Regular Health Checks – condition monitoring over time.
- Targeted Repairs – saving costs and avoiding unnecessary demolition.
This structural baseline opens the door to predictive maintenance.
Rather than responding to structural distress or catastrophic utility failure after it occurs, asset managers can conduct regular physical check-ups to track condition trends over time.
Early diagnosis of slab degradation, moisture intrusion or structural shifts allows owners to perform targeted, lower-cost repairs before minor issues escalate into major capital expenditures.
Screening Eagle addresses these challenges by combining sensing technology with next-generation intelligence capabilities.
Its ecosystem of IoT sensors is designed to deliver high-quality data alongside software featuring real-time 3D visualisation, augmented reality and embedded AI algorithms for automatic data interpretation.
This subsurface intelligence platform, which includes Proceq GPRs and other NDT and concrete assessment technologies, forms part of Screening Eagle’s approach to protecting the built world, de-risking commercial real estate and assessing critical infrastructure around the globe.
Protecting the Built World
At its core, protecting the built world is about preserving physical safety, longevity and financial value.
Capital markets, institutional investors and municipal leaders all rely on the stability of the built environment to support economic activity.
By taking the guesswork out of property acquisition, reuse and renovation, structural data bridges the gap between old structures and new demands.
As modern construction shifts towards renovations over new builds, knowing the health of a building is crucial to accurately pricing future capital expenditure, negotiating acquisition terms or walking away from assets burdened by hidden structural liabilities.
Where AI and Digital Twins Fit In
Modern inspection technology, particularly multi-channel sensing systems, is generating vastly more data than in the past.
By Broekhove’s estimate, modern systems can generate between 50 and 100 times more data than traditional methods.
That volume is exactly where he sees artificial intelligence delivering the greatest impact.
“The objective isn’t to replace the engineer or the inspector,” he says. “It’s to help them identify patterns, anomalies and areas of concern faster and more consistently.”
AI can, for example, assist in identifying defects within ground-penetrating radar data, while digital twins provide a persistent representation of an asset’s condition over time.
Combined with repeat inspections, this allows Screening Eagle to move towards what Broekhove describes as a “4D approach”, understanding not just an asset’s condition at a single point in time, but how it is evolving.
Lessons From the National Highways Structures Moonshot
Screening Eagle’s involvement in National Highways’ Structures Moonshot initiative, which combined NDT, AI and robotics for infrastructure inspection, offered a clear illustration of this thinking in practice.
GPR, ultrasonic testing, electrical resistivity and robotics were deployed together, with Screening Eagle’s Proceq technologies used alongside robotic systems to investigate hard-to-access areas and identify issues such as voids within post-tensioned tendon ducts.
The biggest takeaway, Broekhove says, is that no single technology can solve every inspection challenge, and that inspection itself needs to become more scalable.
“There are simply too many ageing structures for every inspection to depend on highly manual processes,” he notes.
Robotics, in his view, is not about replacing inspectors, but about extending their reach.
“I don’t see the future as robots replacing inspectors. It’s more inspectors becoming more capable because they have better tools, better data and better access to the information, and to the locations they need to inspect.”
Seventy Years of Heritage, Built for Innovation
Screening Eagle’s underlying NDT technology, Proceq, traces its roots back more than 70 years to 1954 and a lineage of industry-defining products including the Schmidt Hammer, Equotip, Profometer and Pundit.
Broekhove sees that heritage as a genuine advantage rather than a legacy to work around.
“That experience gives us a really strong understanding of how inspectors actually operate and use the equipment, what measurements are usable and reliable, and what customers have come to expect,” he says.
But hardware alone no longer defines competitiveness in the sector.
“Customers are increasingly reliant on software, workflows, visualisation and cloud computing. Automation and AI are becoming just as important as the hardware.”
The company’s strategy, he says, rests on combining its NDT heritage with continued investment on the software and workflow side, bridging the physical and digital worlds to produce a usable output for the end customer.
Extending Asset Life Instead of Replacing It
As infrastructure ages worldwide and owners face mounting pressure on safety, sustainability and budgets, Broekhove argues that better inspection data is often the difference between unnecessary replacement and appropriate, well-timed repair.
Without accurate condition data, decisions tend to be based on assumptions, leading either to overly conservative and costly replacement or intervention that comes too late.
Non-destructive methods such as GPR, ultrasonics and corrosion measurement give engineers visibility beneath and inside a structure without damaging it.
This allows owners to tighten the window between premature and overdue intervention.
There is a sustainability dimension too.
“The best sustainability strategy is often to make the infrastructure we already have last longer,” Broekhove says, “as opposed to demolition and replacement.”
Sustainability, Circularity and Concrete Reuse
That thinking extends directly into Screening Eagle’s work on sustainable construction.
The company has participated in projects such as SUM4Re, where GPR, ultrasonics and eddy current testing were used to assess materials and feed information into BIM-compatible workflows, part of a broader push to support the direct reuse of structural concrete elements.
“If a concrete element is going to be reused, engineers need confidence in its strength, reinforcement, uniformity and overall condition,” Broekhove explains.
“If we can measure and verify the condition of something accurately, we have a much better chance of safely keeping it in service rather than treating it as waste.”
For an industry with a significant carbon footprint, he sees this as one of the more tangible contributions non-destructive testing can make to the circular economy.
Partnerships as the Foundation for Growth
Broekhove is emphatic that no single company, Screening Eagle included, can solve every part of the inspection challenge alone.
Partnerships are therefore core to the company’s model, whether that means working with robotics specialists, collaborating with software partners or drawing on the engineering knowledge of transportation authorities and municipalities.
“The most successful partnerships aren’t simply about distribution,” he says. “They’re about combining capabilities to solve a problem that neither organisation could solve on its own.”
He points to the Structures Moonshot as a clear example of that ecosystem approach in action, alongside the company’s network of regional distributors, which bring local expertise across different markets.
“The future of inspection will be built through ecosystems rather than isolated technologies,” he says. “Strong partnerships are going to be a major part of that.”
Looking Ahead
Asked about Screening Eagle’s ambitions for the next five to ten years, Broekhove describes a company pushing further into GPR, AI-assisted subsurface mapping and robotics-enabled access to hard-to-reach structures, all in service of a broader goal of building richer digital twins and predictive maintenance workflows.
“We’re trying to become more of a digital infrastructure lifecycle company,” he says, “to give customers a full, start-to-finish solution, sensors, software, training, and a complete digital twin.”
In an industry facing ageing infrastructure, tightening budgets and growing sustainability pressures, that shift from periodic, manual inspection to continuous, connected asset intelligence looks set to define the next phase of Screening Eagle’s growth.
Read our work with GPRS here: https://busenq.com/gprs-screening-eagle-infrastructure-intelligence/