In today’s fast-evolving engineering landscape, technical professionals are under growing pressure to accelerate delivery, ensure safety, and maintain compliance with a complex and changing web of standards, codes and regulations. On May 14, Accuris hosted a 30-minute live webinar to showcase how Engineering Workbench (EWB) Professional empowers engineers to streamline standards research, improve traceability, and reduce compliance risk across the engineering lifecycle.
This recap highlights the key moments, workflows, and real-world benefits shared during the session, hosted by Jamie Fox and Van Damale – showcasing how engineers across industries rely on EWB Professional to enhance efficiency and stay compliant.
Why Standards Are Central to Engineering Processes
For engineering organizations across industries, engineering standards are more than just technical specifications. They’re the foundation for ensuring safety, optimizing performance, and meeting regulatory requirements to stay compliant.
Yet, many organizations still rely on fragmented tools and manual procedures for managing these documents – leading to inefficiencies, outdated information, and organizational risk. As the team emphasized during the webinar, it’s not just about being able to find the standards – it’s about knowing when something important changes and ensuring that information reaches the right people quickly.
To meet the demands of modern engineering, a smarter, more connected approach is essential.
The Shift to Digital Standards and AI in Engineering Research
Digital transformation is changing the way engineers interact with standards. With EWB Professional, engineers can:
- Ask questions in plain language to find relevant information instantly
- Surface answers buried deep in documents
- Compare revisions automatically using AI and machine learning
The use of new technologies and AI in engineering isn’t just about speed or convenience – it drives measurable improvements in research, decision-making, and cross-team collaboration.
“Engineering teams are saving 75% of time from managing current industry standards, codes, regulations inside of a centralized digitalized platform like Engineering Workbench,” the team said, referencing a recent Forrester Report, “and over 20% of time on researching, referencing, and embedding standards content across engineering ecosystems.”
For engineers across disciplines (like mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, chemical engineering, environmental engineering, materials engineering, civil engineering, computer engineering, electronic engineering, systems management, process management, quality management, and more), having access to intelligent, structured knowledge makes your engineering research more efficient and reliable.
How Engineering Workbench Professional Improves Traceability
Traceability is essential for ensuring safety across the lifecycle, supporting audits, and connecting the dots across engineering decisions. During the webinar, Van demonstrated how EWB Professional enables:
- Digital linking of industry standards content to design choices and downstream documentation and implementation
- Easy access to linked standards and requirements for faster design validation
- Consistent knowledge transfer across teams and suppliers
This type of traceability helps teams and organizations across the supply chain align and meet industry standards and federal regulations more effectively.
Engineering Compliance and Change Tracking with Confidence
Engineering compliance isn’t just about checking boxesโit’s about proactively managing risk. EWB Professional includes automated alerts and comparison tools to help engineers:
- Get notified of changes in industry standards and requirements
- Compare version history of standards – running automatic comparisons between current and superseded standards to assess the impact of changes
- Stay compliant with up-to-date standards, specifications, and regulations
These capabilities are especially valuable in highly regulated sectors like the aerospace industry, automotive industry, manufacturing industry and supply chain, oil and gas, energy, and medical devices, where even minor changes in specifications can impact quality management and safety.
Real-World Use Cases
During the session, Jamie and Van shared real-world examples of how engineers can use Engineering Workbench to optimize their search, traceability, and compliance workflows. Common threads included:
- Difficulty managing standards across global suppliers
- Gaps in traceability between requirements and execution
- Manual processes and procedures that delay time-to-market
Using EWB Professional, companies improve research time, reduce compliance risks, and develop traceability with access to the right information at the right time – and tools to optimize collaboration and communication.
Note: Accuris partners with ASME to deliver the Boiler Pressure Vessel Code (BPVC) digitally. Pre-sales are available now, and a Key Changes Webinar is coming up on May 20th.
Additional Questions from the Webinar
Q: Can I access the Forrester report mentioned in the session?
A: Yes, you can download the full Forrester Total Economic Impactโข report here.
Q: Is the AI used in EWB based on a large language model (LLM)?
A: No. EWB uses natural language processing and semantic searchโnot a large language model. It functions as a smarter, context-aware search engine designed to deliver highly relevant results from standards, not generate content.
Q: Does Smart Search only work inside a document, or can I ask questions more broadly?
A: You can do both. Smart Search works within a specific document and also across EWB’s broader standards library. Youโll get results based on where your question appliesโwhether in a single standard or across multiple documents.
Q: Are Annotations private, or can they be shared?
A: Annotations are private by default but can be shared across teams once published, enabling better visibility and traceability across your organization.
Q: Is there an annual licensing fee for access to standards content? Do you include Canadian standards?
A: Yes, all standards content is available through flexible subscription options. We offer access to millions of global standards, including Canadian standards.
Q: Does the AI search engine pull from the open web or just licensed Accuris content?
A: All AI search results are limited to licensed Accuris engineering content, including over 2.8 million industry standards, codes, and regulations, 107 million patents, and 77 million indexed technical publications.
Q: Can we host our internal company standards and documents in EWB?
A: Yes. With our Internal Standards Solution add-on, you can bring your proprietary company standards, best practices, and other documentation into the EWB platform and access them using the same tools shown in the demo.
Q: Can I highlight content without adding an annotation? And can I customize highlight colors?
A: Currently, highlights are tied to annotations. However, weโre rolling out an updated interface soon that will support standalone highlights and color customization.
Q: Are my search queries private, or visible to other organizations?
A: Your searches and usage data are private. They are not shared with other customers or organizations.
Q: Can I organize documents for projects or share them with other colleagues?
A: Yes. You can use the Bookmarks tool to bookmark standards to your homepage, and Project Workspaces feature to group standards by project and share them with other collaborators.
Q: Do we need to upload industry standards to use EWB?
A: No. EWB includes access to 2.8 million standards from hundreds of publishers, plus 107 million patents, and 77 million journals and other technical content. You only need to subscribe to the collections relevant to your organization.
Q: Do you include NFPA content, like NFPA 70?
A: Yes. NFPA content, including NFPA 70, is available in EWB. Reach out to us if you’d like help accessing it.
Q: Can EWB search across internal company files as well as published standards?
A: Yes. We offer solutions that allow EWB to search internal documents alongside industry standardsโbringing everything into one unified workspace.
Watch the Webinar On-Demand
Didnโt catch the live session? Watch it now on demand to see EWB Professional in action and hear directly from our team.
Final Thoughts
In recent years, advances in computer science and the role of artificial intelligence, digital engineering, and machine learning in engineering has expanded rapidly. Tools like Engineering Workbench Professional help teams navigate complexity, ensure safety, and meet standards more confidently.
Across engineering industries and disciplines, EWB Professional supports your ability to manage change, maintain performance, and deliver results.
To learn more about how digital tools are transforming engineering practices and compliance, connect with our team today.