Why infrastructure project data needs a standard format

Everyone in an infrastructure transaction has the same complaint about project data.

Developers say each counterparty asks for the same information in a different format. Investors say the data rooms they receive are not comparable across deals. Lenders say what passes bankability in one portfolio reappears, differently organised, in the next.

They are all describing one problem: the data is there, but it has no shape.

The cost of having no standard

This is not a cosmetic concern. It is the single largest source of friction in institutional capital’s engagement with renewables. It lengthens DD timelines. It forces every buyer to rebuild the same analytical apparatus from scratch on every deal. And it makes the real patterns — across regions, vintages, technologies — almost impossible to see.

We see it every time: the same documents, reorganised by hand, inside every DD.

What a standard would look like

A usable standard is not a rigid template. It is:

• A well-defined schema for the objects that matter — plants, permits, contracts, counterparties, financials, operating records.
• Source-linked values — every extracted value points back to the original document and page.
• Per-field confidence — for each value, how reliable the extraction is and why.
• Machine-readable — exportable to JSON or equivalent, so downstream systems (credit models, portfolio trackers, regulatory reporting) can consume it without manual intervention.

None of these properties are exotic. They are the minimum if the data is ever going to become a real asset.

AIP Engine

AIP Engine is our first attempt at that shape. It ingests unstructured project packages — PDFs, spreadsheets, scans, photographs — and produces a structured Dossier Digitale Strutturato (DDS) that conforms to the schema we develop on live deals.

The product is deliberately narrow. It serves the three profiles we know best: investors running acquisition-side DD on Italian renewable assets, asset managers onboarding new mandates, lenders reviewing bankability for project finance.

The schema will evolve. The input coverage will expand. The underlying conviction won’t: infrastructure data needs a standard format, and the most credible place to build it is from the receiving end of the transaction, not from the issuing end.

If this resonates — either as a user or as a collaborator on the schema itself — write to us.