Stan Hansen, Chief Operating Officer at Egnyte, explains how connected project information, purpose-built AI agents and safeguards can support secure AI adoption across the Middle East.
Egnyte has expanded its Middle East offering with AI-powered capabilities designed to help architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms connect, govern and extract intelligence from complex project information. The enhancements include Project Hub, purpose-built AI agents, AI Safeguards and right-to-left language support for its Arabic web interface.
In an exclusive interview, Stan Hansen, Chief Operating Officer at Egnyte, discusses why effective AI requires trusted project context, how specialised agents can support complex projects and the role of governance in scaling AI securely across the region.
Interview excerpts
Why does effective AI require connected, well-governed project context rather than simply access to documents?
Content is the fundamental layer that powers AI in knowledge work. To produce relevant business outcomes, AI needs more than access to documents. It needs to understand the connected information and relationships between content, projects, people, systems, and industry knowledge. Furthermore, the content that AI processes should follow the data governance principles set by the organisation.
This is where Egnyte provides the trusted industry context that helps AI deliver more accurate answers and automate specialised workflows, especially for the built environment. Our AI Safeguards prevent sensitive data from being included in AI-generated responses. Egnyte helps organisations establish the connected and governed data foundation needed to apply AI reliably across project delivery.
How can purpose-built AI agents help AEC firms improve efficiency and turn complex project information into actionable intelligence?
Middle East region is delivering increasingly large and complex projects involving distributed teams, joint ventures, consultants, contractors, owners, and extensive technology ecosystems. These projects generate enormous volumes of drawings, BIM models, specifications, contracts, correspondence, and other project information.
Egnyte provides an information foundation that helps firms connect this information across teams and technology platforms, apply governance consistently, and use trusted project and business data to power AI.
To accelerate AI adoption, Egnyte is introducing three AI agents relevant to the built environment: Specifications Analyst, Contract Analyst, and Building Code Analyst. These pre-built AI agents are grounded in the firm’s own governed documents rather than general-purpose AI knowledge. The agents help companies apply AI to large and complex project specifications, analyse intricate contracts, and research building code requirements and surface jurisdiction-specific requirements.
What role does a common data environment play in standardising project structures, managing access and connecting information across multiple platforms?
Project information is frequently fragmented across offices, jobsites, applications, project teams, and external stakeholders. A common data environment like Egnyte’s Project Hub helps create a consistent information structure so teams can find and work with trusted information while maintaining appropriate controls. Project Hub provides project dashboards, standardised project templates, team and permissions management, and lifecycle automation. It works with Egnyte’s broader AEC ecosystem, including integrations with Procore and Autodesk, helping firms connect Egnyte-managed information with purpose-built project delivery workflows.
Why is Arabic right-to-left language support critical to platform adoption, collaboration and information access across Middle East enterprises?
Many enterprise users in the Middle East operate in Arabic as their primary working language. Egnyte’s Right-to-Left (RTL) support for Arabic in the web supports mirrored navigation, bidirectional text handling, and localised interface elements.
Native-language UI parity for Arabic removes a critical adoption barrier for enterprises, especially in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar, as users can navigate, manage files, and collaborate in their preferred language without workarounds.
Egnyte combines RTL UI with its core strengths of enterprise-grade governance, granular permission controls, and hybrid cloud architecture, none of which can be matched by general-purpose tools.
How can organisations apply AI safeguards while using AI tools to generate measurable business outcomes across live projects at scale?
As organisations accelerate AI adoption, ungoverned access to sensitive content by AI systems represents a growing and underappreciated risk. Egnyte’s AI Safeguards addresses this directly by embedding AI controls into the same platform that already manages content, permissions, and governance policies. AI Safeguards enables IT and compliance teams to precisely define which users, groups, file locations, and file properties can be processed by AI. AI interactions are visible and auditable through detailed reports, helping reduce the risk of AI becoming a black box inside the organisation.
Source: Tahawul Tech