Municipal Works Australia CEO Peter Ali recently visited UiLab at Park Ridge in Logan, meeting with UiLab CEO Graeme Caplen and team member Ash Ivory to learn more about the organisation’s work in emerging technology and the opportunities it presents for local government and municipal works.
The visit provided an opportunity to see firsthand how UiLab is helping translate rapidly developing technologies such as artificial intelligence, automation and robotics into practical applications for businesses, educators, government and the wider Logan community.
UiLab, formally Underwood Innovation Lab Pty Ltd, is a Logan City Council beneficial enterprise established to deliver community and economic benefits through innovation and emerging technology. The organisation was founded in 2023 and operates from Park Ridge, with a focus on building local skills, supporting industry and ensuring the Logan community can take advantage of the opportunities created by new technology.
Peter said he was particularly impressed by UiLab’s emphasis on making technology practical and accessible.
“Technology is developing incredibly quickly, but what stood out during the visit was the way UiLab is taking technologies that can sometimes seem quite complex and demonstrating how they can be applied to solve real problems,” Peter said.
“There is a very strong connection between what UiLab is doing and the challenges facing local government. Councils are continually looking for ways to improve productivity, make better use of their data, manage assets more effectively and give their staff the skills to work with new technology.”
UiLab delivers a diverse range of programs across education, industry and the community. Its Future Tech Open House program gives residents, businesses, students and industry representatives hands-on exposure to AI, automation and robotics, while its Industry AI Toolkit provides practical training designed to help workplaces use artificial intelligence for everyday tasks such as research, administration, reporting and productivity.
Education is another major area of activity. UiLab’s Teacher AI Toolkit provides professional development for educators on practical and responsible uses of AI, including lesson planning, assessment, feedback and the selection of appropriate AI tools. The organisation also runs initiatives including the Digital Builders Hackathon, aimed at giving young people practical experience creating with technology rather than simply consuming it.
UiLab has also brought together government, technology providers and industry through events exploring smart cities, artificial intelligence and real-time technology. Its 2025 Vantiq GenAI Summit Logan, for example, brought technology and industry leaders together to examine AI-powered security, smart-city applications and real-time systems.
One area of particular interest to MWA is the potential for artificial intelligence and computer vision to transform municipal asset inspections.
Logan City Council has been at the forefront of this work, collaborating with the University of Queensland on machine-learning and computer-vision technology capable of examining imagery of roads, footpaths, line marking and kerbs and automatically identifying defects. The resulting approach allows asset condition information to be collected and processed more rapidly, potentially helping councils prioritise maintenance and renewal programs.
Earlier work within Logan’s digital road environment has also explored the collection of large quantities of street-level imagery and the automated identification of infrastructure including signs, streetlights, pavement markings and defects. These technologies demonstrate how routine asset inspections could increasingly be supported by AI rather than relying entirely on traditional manual inspection processes.
These applications have obvious relevance to MWA members responsible for managing extensive road, footpath and infrastructure networks, often with limited staff and increasingly constrained budgets.
MWA members will have an opportunity to meet the UiLab team when the organisation participates in MWA LoGov at Logan on Wednesday, 21 October 2026.
The relationship is also expected to continue into 2027, with plans for UiLab to present at the MWA National Municipal Works & Engineering Conference in Bendigo in March 2027.
The proposed Bendigo presentation will focus on the work undertaken in Logan around road and asset inspection technology and explore how AI, computer vision and emerging digital tools can be applied to municipal infrastructure management.
Peter said bringing organisations such as UiLab into MWA events was an important part of exposing municipal works professionals to technologies that could have genuine operational benefits.
“There is no shortage of discussion about AI at the moment, but for our industry the important question is how we turn it into something useful,” Peter said.
“Road inspections, asset condition assessments and infrastructure management are areas where this technology has the potential to save significant amounts of time while providing councils with better information to support their decisions.
“MWA is looking forward to having UiLab involved at LoGov in Logan and then continuing the conversation at Bendigo in 2027. It will give our members an opportunity to see some very practical examples of how emerging technology can be used in the day-to-day delivery of municipal works.”
Peter thanked Graeme, Ash and the UiLab team for taking the time to showcase their work and said MWA looked forward to developing the relationship further.
“Seeing what the team is doing in Logan was genuinely impressive. It is exactly the sort of innovation we want to connect with our members around Australia.”
