About
Founder & Principal
Dr. Ali A. Harajli, PhD
Founder & Principal
Dr. Ali A. Harajli is an experienced professional bridge engineer with a demonstrated history in the bridge design and construction industry. He brings deep expertise in project and resource management, with substantial involvement in applied R&D for innovative design and construction methods, technology transfer, life-cycle assessment, and cross-functional team leadership.
He holds a B.S. (1985), M.S. (1987), and PhD (2015) — all in Bridge Design and Construction Engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder.
Dr. Harajli was a Senior Manager within the Bridge Engineering Division at the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), where he led work across bridge design, construction, rehabilitation, and applied research — contributing to critical infrastructure across the state.
Over more than three decades of professional engineering practice in Colorado, he worked across pre-tensioned and post-tensioned bridges, precast and cast-in-place structures, earth retaining walls, and steel structures. He assessed structural integrity and load capacity of bridges, developed mitigation measures to improve performance, and used finite element modeling to evaluate safety for historic and unique structures. He authored multiple research topics in bridge preservation, managed academic and consultant research projects, and developed statewide specifications for epoxy and polyester concrete thin-bonded overlays used in concrete deck corrosion protection.
In his role at Express Bridge Layouts, Dr. Harajli oversees the quality standards and process design of the automation platform.
30+ years
Colorado bridge engineering
PhD
Bridge Design & Construction Engineering
CDOT
Bridge Engineering Division Senior Manager (former)
Why Express Bridge Layouts exists
After three decades designing, reviewing, and building bridges in Colorado, Dr. Harajli kept coming back to the same observation: a meaningful share of every bridge project's drafting time was spent on predictable geometry — plan views, deck sections, and elevations that followed the same logic, project after project, with only the dimensions changing.
The judgment calls — the structural decisions, the code reviews, the engineering — are where senior engineers and drafters create real value. The repetitive geometry is not. Yet drafters were spending full days on layouts a computer could generate in minutes.
EBL exists to close that gap: proprietary automation for the bridge type the founder knows best, with the geometric output delivered as views in .txt script format. The client's team handles dimensions, code review, and engineer-of-record sign-off. EBL handles the repetitive geometry.