Sensat targets AI agent as its customers' most active user by 2027 after Birmingham User Day

Sensat has set itself a target that an artificial intelligence agent will be its customers' most active user of its spatial data platform by User Day 2027, after unveiling its first agentic AI at its fifth User Day in Birmingham.

The company said people from more than 20 organisations, five sectors and two continents attended the event. It announced ASQ, which it describes as its first agentic AI, and Digital Landscapes 2.0, an update to the modelling that underpins its platform.

ASQ lets users query all their spatial data in one place by pointing to a site and asking a question, Sensat said. Today, it said, every answer in the platform still needs someone to find it, often across 20 or 30 layers of data. ASQ is in private beta, with a full launch planned for Q1.

Ryan Ciesielski, Group Head of Geospatial at National Grid, held a fireside chat with Sensat's CTO, Khalid, on moving from maps to decisions, according to Sensat's account of the day.

The announcements

Digital Landscapes 2.0 adds more underlying datasets and new modelling that recreates facades, trees and true ground levels, according to Sensat. It is due in Q1 2027 across the UK and US.

Beyond ASQ, Sensat said it plans for agents to take on routine project upkeep in the background, such as sorting a thousand markups overnight or filing 60 project documents in the right place.

The company said it had delivered the three promises it made at the previous User Day: dynamic Workspaces, integrations with Autodesk, Asite and Bentley, and Snapshot, which is now on its second version. It added that it is certified to ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus and is working towards SOC 2 to support its US customers.

Customer sessions

Zak Johnson and Dan Neagu of Severn Trent told the event that value engineering with Sensat had saved £7.2m in total across one scheme, according to Sensat's account of the day.

Sensat has previously reported on its work with Severn Trent on a £450m programme to build hundreds of storm tanks within 90 days. On that programme Sensat reported a 70% reduction in time spent on site assessments, 93 initial site assessments completed in a single day, and estimated savings of £736,000 from reducing physical surveys. The two organisations won at the Water Industry Awards for that work.

Darek Wheatley and Mike Terminiello of National Grid US described how they use the platform to communicate with local stakeholders and regulators on permitting and delivery. Mateo Del Cura of SP Energy Networks said Sensat is speeding up collaboration and decision-making with its contractor M Group. David Lamb of United Utilities gave the keynote, which included how UU is considering treated wastewater for industrial processes.

Adoption barriers

Sensat said the biggest gap between high- and low-adoption programmes is data rather than appetite or tools. Integrations with systems such as Autodesk Forma, Esri and Bentley ProjectWise are critical, it said, but still require internal approval at customers. Its ProjectWise integration, which syncs files from ProjectWise into Sensat, was released on 17 May 2023.

Some customers are now taking a "comply or justify" approach, the company said, under which shared spatial decisions live in Sensat by default and anything else needs a reason.

Background

The agent push follows a £3m strategic investment round led by Mercia Ventures, which Sensat closed on 18 May 2026. At the time the company said it was building specialised AI agents on an agentic architecture, and described itself as a partner to global utilities including National Grid, Avangrid and SPEN.

Harry Atkinson, Sensat's co-founder, said in the May release that the company was "seeing a partner like National Grid estimate $1bn in savings through the use of our platform". Howard Mitchell, Investment Director at Mercia Ventures, said the solution was "highly relevant internationally".

In March 2025 Sensat was highlighted within National Grid Partners' $100m investment commitment to AI start-ups in energy, and said its platform was already helping National Grid visualise and manage critical infrastructure. Its about page says Atkinson started the company in 2017. Companies House records Sensat Ltd's registered office at 314 Midsummer Boulevard, Milton Keynes.

Sensat said its first User Day in 2022 was organised with £1,200 and four weeks, with Mace Dragados presenting HS2 Euston and H2 Green Steel, now Stegra, presenting Boden. Both remain customers, it said, with thousands of hours of work carried out in the platform each month.

Session recordings will be released on LinkedIn and YouTube over the coming months, with Digital Landscapes 2.0 due in Q1 2027.