At engineering conferences in Miami, Columbus, and Ocean City, MD, John Oliver Smith has done something unusual.
Standing before rooms filled with seasoned engineers, he has opened his iPhone and demonstrated a beta AI assistant built around his own decades of engineering experience. Live. In real time. He shows how field lessons, corrosion studies, pump station designs, and landfill programs can be preserved, queried, and thoughtfully augmented with artificial intelligence.
Not as spectacle or replacement but as continuity. That moment captures who John is.
In October 2025, John joined BAI Group to lead the firm’s Maryland office. As a Professional Engineer and Board-Certified Environmental Engineer, he brings decades of experience in water, wastewater, corrosion control, solid waste management, and infrastructure systems. John is a graduate of The Ohio State University with a B.S. in Civil Engineering, and his career has spanned municipal, federal, and international work — including engineering leadership in Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, and across the United States.
His work has always centered on systems that must endure. He has served as an engineer and project manager for complex municipal and federal programs, including work with DC Water and the U.S. Department of Defense.
While John’s experience is global, his recent work is deeply local. In Maryland, he has led pump station design and rehabilitation projects, balancing hydraulics, safety, emergency power, and constructability. He has guided corrosion control programs for transmission mains and utility corridors, pairing field testing with solutions that crews can realistically build, inspect, and maintain.
In Annapolis, through BAI’s applied AI division, bAI Labs, John is in the early stages of exploring practical applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and its implications for workforce development. At bAI Labs, we refer to this nascent field of work as Civil AI, applied artificial intelligence grounded in civil, environmental, and construction engineering practice. This means AI systems must ultimately operate under real field conditions, regulatory frameworks, and professional engineering judgment, and be safe for decades.
In parallel, bAI Labs has begun conversations with a local community college to explore the design of a two-year Civil Engineering Technology pathway that could prepare technicians to work alongside civil engineers and surveyors using AI-assisted workflows. The intent is not rapid deployment, but thoughtful planning: building a workforce that understands both infrastructure fundamentals and the responsible use of emerging tools.
Beyond the Office
Outside engineering and conference rooms, John’s life is unmistakably grounded in family and history. He and his wife, Davar Ardalan, BAI Group’s Director of AI Integration, have raised eight children — seven boys and one girl — and are now proud grandparents to five grandchildren.
John is also the host of a four-part podcast series, Is John Smith My Name? — a personal exploration of ancestry and identity. The series traces his family’s roots back to the Alsace region of Germany and France, to an ancestor named Johann Schmidt, who immigrated to Pennsylvania in the late 1700s, later moving to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and eventually to Ohio through his descendant, Hardin Smith.
For an engineer who spends his career preserving systems for the future, the search for origins carries its own quiet symmetry.
When he is not working with municipalities or mentoring engineers, John can often be found sailing on the Chesapeake Bay — guided by wind, water, and the same respect for balance, resilience, and systems thinking that has defined his career.