Time for change : There has never been a greater public appetite for new ways to travel across and enjoy towns and cities. Active travel programmes complement a wider urban improvement and resilience agenda, and can help produce healthier, more resilient and enjoyable places to live and work.

Active travel infrastructure must be safe, well-designed and well-connected. Many regional governments are promoting active travel through the retrofit of existing urban landscapes and the development of new walking and cycling routes.

We develop active travel policies and strategies, design cycle and walking infrastructure, analyse accessibility and inclusivity, advise on cycle and pedestrian planning, behavioural change, bike sharing, wayfinding and public realm design.

We can help you in a number of ways.

Advice and support

Successful active travel schemes combine a number of elements, from transport, public health and wellbeing to town and city planning, climate change and the environment. We bring together expertise from each of those domains and experience from active travel schemes the world over. At a senior level, we often act as a sounding board for cities and authorities as they formulate their plans.

Analyse and model

We combine active travel principles with data analytics and modelling to measure and guide active travel initiatives and streetscape changes. In Hong Kong, we used the first integrated simulation model to combine interactions between pedestrian and vehicular traffic to mitigate congestion and improve pedestrian accessibility. We also use our own people movement expertise, and MassMotion tool to simulate pedestrian behaviour in different scenarios. By factoring in the purpose of individual trips, we can plan for different scenarios and more accurately forecast travel demand.

Design and plan

We work with local and regional governments to design and plan strategies that promote, facilitate and enable active travel at local and city-wide levels. In Cardiff, UK, we worked with Cardiff Council to develop proposals for a network of cycleways that connect major destinations and communities across the city. As trusted advisors, we partner developers, architects and planners of significant masterplans and developments to deliver exemplar schemes.

Engage and consult

Active travel schemes work best when you engage with the community right from the start. We have co-designed schemes working closely with local communities. Across Greater Manchester, we have connected with thousands of local residents to co-design 10 Active Neighbourhood schemes through workshops, drop-in events, surveys and an interactive online engagement hub.

As well as physical engagement and consultation, we use virtual reality technologies to turn proposed schemes into engaging, sensory experiences that build support, improving the quality and detail of community feedback. We also create virtual reality ‘exhibitions’ that allow stakeholders to access information, view maps and drawings, watch scheme fly-throughs and share feedback from any location at any time. In Australia, we produced a range of digital outputs to create a truly immersive experience for a proposed active travel Riverwalk.

Monitor and evaluate

To test the ongoing effectiveness of active travel schemes, and ensure they complement the wider transport network, you have to measure and monitor. To do this, we have developed the industry’s leading spatial design network analysis tool in partnership with the Cardiff School of Planning and Geography. This tool uses industry-standard network representations to analyse accessibility and predict flows of people walking and cycling.

Deliver and implement

We can deliver active travel strategies and help build walking and cycling networks and capabilities. We can also implement street enhancements, such as widening footways, ‘parklets’ and protected routes. We played a leading role in delivering Belfast’s Connswater Community Greenway creating green spaces alongside pedestrian and cycle routes to improve connectivity.

A country’s arts venues are where it shares its most important ideas. As places they allow incredible performances to stimulate every sense. And as designs they are often works of art, inspiring and encouraging the audiences they serve.

To achieve a great design, clients need a partner who understands the challenges and parallel objectives of these projects. Arup’s collaborative ethos enables us to realise these complex goals. Our breadth of disciplines and collaborative ‘Total Architecture’ philosophy means we value and share the creative vision that drives cultural projects..

Thought-provoking places

Arup has played a defining role in the development and design of some of the world’s favourite cultural buildings. From our work realizing the Sydney Opera House, the Centre Pompidou to our more recent work like the San Francisco MOMA or the Pinewood film studios extension, we understand what drives successful cultural projects. We work as partners to our clients, always approaching projects with insights into how to serve their needs and the needs of their audiences. We’re also able to help them understand how a project will fit into the wider urban landscape of transport systems, retail, public and private spaces.

Engineering experiences

Arup understands the performance environment. Our aim is always to design and engineer the architect’s vision so that completed venues perform as well as the artists who will appear in them. We bring a rigorous understanding of how the precise interplay of acoustics, materials, lighting, shape and space will produce spaces suitable for every kind of cultural encounter, from art to music, film-making to broadcast facilities.

The National Theater Taichung in Taiwan perfectly captures the breadth of the Arup approach: a structurally demanding, highly irregular design, housing three high-performance theatres.

A range of expertise

Understanding what produces a positive visitor experience is central to successful cultural buildings. For venues, backstage and auditorium must work hand-in-glove to produce an effective environment for performers, crew and audience alike. Security, object conservation, lighting design are all central to museums and galleries. Arup’s range of specialist design disciplines play a big role in producing these experiences. Our world-class expertise in acoustics and theatre consulting is pivotal to venues the world over.

Our daylighting expertise has been refined over decades, protecting works from the harsh Texas sunlight at the Menil Collection to our recent work on Jumex Museum, Mexico. We also advise on the most appropriate MEP solution for a project. We found innovative ways to reduce energy use by 30% at the V&A Museum’s Medieval & Renaissance Galleries, which must carefully house many delicate, centuries old treasures.

Virtual worlds, real insights

Digital technology is allowing venues to turn what they know about their visitors into new experiences, while providing owners and operators with greater control over maintenance and budgets.

Arup has pioneered digital tools’ ability to improve the physical world. Our work on the Virginia Tech CreateCube represents the coming shift to hybrid environments, where digital technologies are used to enhance the experience of physical art. Our SoundLab modelling suite allows clients and public to experience how venues will look, feel, and sound, before they are built. We’ve even used these tools in creative collaboration with artists and musicians like Lou Reed and Nick Cave, producing immersive spatial experiences for the listener. And our MassMotion tool provides valuable data-driven insights into the movement of people in public spaces, informing better design choices.

An astonishing engineering feat

The Sydney Opera House was opened by Queen Elizabeth in 1973. With its shimmering sails and prominent position on Bennelong Point, this astonishing building has come to define its city, the nation of Australia and has become the benchmark for iconic building design, for the arts and beyond. Today, the Opera House is a busy performing arts centre, home of Opera Australia, The Australian Ballet and the Sydney Symphony.

It has been a testing time for the aviation sector – no question. For many airports, a return to full operation after the Covid-19 pandemic will take time. We have been helping clients to explore how their businesses need to adapt and recover. This period has also been an opportunity to rethink aspects of our industry and define a new baseline for future operations. With over 60 years of experience and deep knowledge across the sector globally, we believe a better way forward is possible.

HOW WE CAN HELP:

Our team can help across five core areas:

The sustainable aviation era

Like the rest of the transport sector, aviation businesses must balance demand and global growth with the need to decarbonise, become more energy and operationally efficient and address climate change. We help clients across the industry to understand how to make their operations and services more sustainable, designing for lower energy use and operating costs at the same time. We are working with our aviation clients to help them rethink their business models and operations to maximise social value, ensure supply chains are resilient, develop circular business models, reduce emissions, generate electricity, harvest water and eliminate waste. 

From energy efficiency at San Francisco International Airport to greener solutions at Hong Kong International Airport to sustainable design at Abu Dhabi International Airport to sustainability masterplanning at Mexico City New International Airport, we have the global experience and expertise to help airport operators and airlines balance the key elements of sustainable development at a corporate, project development and operational level.

Planning future services

We help aviation clients set new standards of international travel service and commercial return, in what is still one of the most competitive sectors of the world economy. Our airport planning expertise in negotiating the complex relationships between demand, capacity, connect time, passenger flow, regulation and investment has shaped the passenger experience at many of the world’s leading airports.

We shape projects from the earliest stages, including new airports, new or repurposed terminals, even new forms of air mobility. In each context, our work produces development programmes where physical design is precisely aligned to passenger behaviour and changing market needs. By bringing these disciplines and insights together we enable clients to lower costs, improve operations and generate higher revenues.

Design that meets demand

We have over 60 years’ global experience in the physical design of airport structures, from control towers to passenger terminals to cargo and maintenance facilities. Our breadth of expertise in engineering, design, and operational performance makes us the perfect partner to successfully deliver aviation projects of any size that respond to increased demand for capacity and quality of passenger experience, while addressing sustainable development outcomes. We ensure our clients’ facilities and infrastructure are designed and operate optimally, through an insightful alignment of people, processes, physical assets, and technology, balancing commercial, social and environmental objectives.

Digital insights, operational benefits

Airports are increasingly able to shape their operational, strategic and tactical decisions using the power of real-time data. Our digital aviation team brings together Arup’s traditional planning, engineering, design and advisory strengths with advanced digital expertise in enterprise architecture, modelling, data analytics, and user–centred design. We work with clients to develop strategies, choose and implement the right technologies and make the operational changes required to improve both the long term and day-to-day running of their business.

We have developed a valuable new service with our passenger analytics tool the Airport Demand Analyser, to better predict passenger numbers through terminals, based on live global flight data. We have used advanced digital analytics to help meet surface access sustainability goals. We have captured, measured, and analysed real-time passenger data to inform changes to operations and improvements to service quality. Our MassMotion passenger modelling software has helped plan recovery capacity in a new physically distant world.

Ready to launch

In aviation, successfully launching new services, opening new facilities depends on a rigorous combination of training, new technology and organisational change. Our operational readiness and transition (ORAT) service is designed to achieve these converging goals. Our advisory services extend to improving operational efficiencies, passenger processing and organisational design, asset management and repurposing for resilience and transformation.

At Heathrow Terminal 2 our ORAT approach involved 175 trials, testing by 14,000 people and training for 25,000 airport staff. At Emirates Terminal 3, Dubai Airport we ensured the opening of the biggest single passenger terminal in the world without incident. Facilities, processes, technology and most importantly, people, worked in harmony from day one.

At Los Angeles International Airport we helped Delta Air Lines orchestrate the most challenging terminal move in commercial aviation history, planning and implementing complex airport programmes without interrupting day-to-day activity – the first step of a major modernisation programme.

Every city faces tough development challenges, from meeting the needs of growing populations to tackling air pollution to improving economic opportunity. These issues must also be aligned to a transition to net zero and adaptation to climate risks.

Arup is active in hundreds of cities across the world supporting city leaders and authorities, investors, developers and community groups to shape a better future for their city. Our strategists, economists, urban planners, designers, and technical specialists are working across multiple cities that vary enormously in terms of their age, scale, and physical make-up, applying an integrated approach to solve their issues. Our aim is to produce more sustainable environments and buildings, improve transport connectivity, achieve cleaner air, provide better access to health and education facilities and stimulate more economic activity.

We work as a global network of experts, able to develop ideas and share knowledge between cities that face similar challenges, before developing an effective local response.

We always aim to become a partner to cities who want to build a future that works for everyone.

Our areas of expertise:

Planning and funding

Cities are evolving at an incredibly fast pace, fuelled by factors like new technology, changes in lifestyle and public behaviour, the global pandemic and growing environmental threats.

We help cities to chart a path through these complex scenarios, by establishing a long-term vision using data driven modelling and analytical tools, backed by economic analysis to understand impacts, insightful research and a commitment to listen to communities. Our advice and global expertise helps shape projects for success and gain support from the policy level to community buy-in.

Our planning expertise works at all scales too, identifying routes to a city’s economic recovery, or planning new social, urban and transport infrastructure.

Placemaking and architecture

The world’s most thriving cities have a few things in common. Shared urban and green spaces. Clean air and accessible public transport. Inclusive policy making and a commitment to health and wellbeing. A sense that a city belongs to all its people.

As a global team of architects, urban designers and landscape experts, our human-centred approach has been influencing the fabric of our cities for decades. Our teams work on every kind of project, from designing new public realms to bold urban greening schemes, from commercial buildings to much-loved cultural facilities.

Our approach to placemaking is to enhance liveability, strengthen community resilience and enable sustainable economic growth in developed and developing cities. Everything we do is underpinned by a focus on the social value our work might produce.

Urban regeneration

Urban regeneration takes many forms, from reimagining buildings after deindustrialisation, to developing creative schemes for districts that have languished without vision or investment.

Our integrated teams of designers, planners, architects and economists work with decision makers and communities to revitalise the built, natural and social environment in sustainable ways, whether it’s for a smaller scheme or a large regeneration project.

We bring a wide range of design capabilities to develop regeneration strategies that will produce greater equity and long term resilience for cities. Our process begins with planning and funding, before moving into specific scheme design, public consultation and ultimate implementation.

Resilient, net zero cities 

Cities great and small are facing the impacts of climate change and the need to develop greater resilience.

Urban leaders and communities want quality of life, wellbeing, and financial security to be protected at the same time as the physical resilience of critical infrastructure and systems.

At the same time, net zero targets are focusing leaders’ minds on how to decarbonise their cities. Given the contribution cities make to global greenhouse gas emissions, leaders will increasingly be expected to take action to reduce emissions as they simultaneously build resilience and create truly sustainable and liveable cities. We provide systematic support on these complex goals, working in partnership.

Mobility and connectivity

Transport plays a critical role in every city, being both economic engine and social connector, often becoming part of a city’s unique character and reputation. We believe that well planned transport systems and active travel schemes are a great way to address priorities like congestion, air quality and pollution, as well as longer term urban goals like net zero.

We work with many public agencies to develop appealing alternatives to individual motorised journeys, always seeking new ways for citizens to move around their cities and to other cities in environmentally friendly ways.

We play many roles, from the engineering and design of specific transport systems and infrastructure to the planning and implementation of new active travel initiatives. Our expertise spans initial economic analysis, transport planning, travel modelling and insights, to the architecture of rail, road and aviation assets and infrastructure.

Our ethos combines sustainability with pragmatism. We design improvements for cities’ existing transport systems, assets and infrastructure, as well as modelling schemes and travel behaviours for better system-wide outcomes such as decarbonisation or new forms of urban connectivity..

Inclusive cities

In the world of urban planning and design, expectations are rising. People expect more of the human environment, they want decisions about their communities to embody a shared vision of the future.

Covid-19 disruptions created a reckoning for cities and what we want from them. Social groups and activists are stepping up and demanding change to the status quo they experience daily on their streets. For practitioners and clients alike, there is an opportunity to align environmental, economic, and social considerations and take a more enlightened approach to city development.

Responsible, progressive, inclusive

Whatever terms or language are used, ‘greater equity’, ‘increased inclusion’, or ‘social value’, we take time to understand the deep connections and interdependencies between people and their environment. By taking account of people’s behaviours, preferences, needs and aspirations we can develop the most inclusive and beneficial design outcomes.

Inclusion isn’t a push-button process. Our ethos is to bring everyone into the process; that means clients and developers, architects and occupants, commuters and operators, cyclists and drivers, walkers and wheelchair users, closer together. For our teams, it means being a translator, a listener, a collaborator, and always ready to learn and adapt. This is how we develop cities where everyone sees their priorities recognised in the built and natural environments they call home.

As a trusted partner in commercial property, Arup has helped redefine expectations of high quality urban living and working environments. Our work continues to evolve in response to the changing aspirations and challenges of developers, owners and occupants alike.

To lift the competitive performance of a building project, or to help it find funding in tough markets, Arup offers a powerful combination of advisory, design and technical services. Whether it’s mission-critical data centres, security-sensitive financial headquarters, or the latest co-working spaces, we help clients realise the incredible promise of digital technology in real estate.

Anticipate and adapt

As city populations grow in density worldwide, the way we use our buildings is changing. Property developers are seeking structurally efficient solutions that open up more usable floor space and draw greater potential from available land – as in super skyscrapers like China Guangzhou International Finance Centre

Commercial developers continue to find multi-faceted value in mixed-use building projects that combine spaces for working, living, retail, hotels and leisure.

Employers seeking office space are also looking for higher value. They want better environments that reflect the changing way we live and work, with real time digital insights ‘designed in’ from the start. Arup is leading this digital property era, producing responsive, intelligent workplaces such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Headquarters in Seattle and the White Collar Factory in London.

Hard-working assets

Virtual design is helping to redefine performance. In new design benchmarks such as BSkyB’s Harlequin 1 headquarters and the Citi Data Centre, Frankfurt, Arup’s use of building information modelling is realising advancements in whole-life operational efficiency, and in attractive, productive environments. At the operational level, our work for The Crown Estate uses digital tools and sensors to provide a previously impossible level of proactive asset management.

Properties such as 1 Bligh Street – Sydney’s first six-star Green Star high rise – are responding to the sustainability requirements of occupants and legislators, and the challenges of cities and climate change.

Building in context

A building’s location – the historic City of London, for example, or densely packed Hong Kong – may demand niche expertise. Arup’s building design specialists are trusted to rise to the toughest, most awkward challenges around the globe, including designing for seismic regions and high winds.

Increasingly, a building’s place in the urban fabric is also a consideration. For forward-thinking clients such as the Co-operative Group, which put its new Manchester headquarters at the heart of local renewal, we are now integrating buildings with surrounding amenities, transport, energy and water infrastructure.

Education estates face varied challenges. In many parts of the world, access to primary education is still hampered by poor facilities. Elsewhere, shifts in funding models, advances in technology and new teaching approaches are transforming expectations of learning environments. Clients need to work with a partner whose understanding spans every aspect of educational property.

Individual responses

Arup works closely with educators, funders, architects and developers to produce buildings and technical solutions that meet their specific needs in primary, secondary and higher education.

Our clients’ requirements range from energy strategies that conserve scarce resources to designing flexible spaces that can adapt to future needs. Arup’s wealth of international experience – commercial, creative and technical – allows us to respond to even the most specialised of challenges.

We can realise specific solutions for laboratories, medicine and science facilities, or contemporary approaches to campus libraries and galleries. We have crafted acoustically intimate spaces for a school for young performers in Singapore as well as an earthquake-resistant design for a girls school in Afghanistan.

Beyond the technical and creative, designing for education demands an appreciation of economic and social context. For example, our prototype for Malawi schools had to be robust, very cheap and easy to build to cope with limited budgets, materials and skills.

High performance spaces

Educators need high performance facilities that are cost-effective to build, run and maintain. It is also important that buildings are engaging, pleasant environments, equipped with quality systems, helping institutions to attract and retain students and staff.

We have forged a close working relationship with Princeton University in the US, for instance, working on a series of projects with exacting performance requirements, including the Frick Chemistry Laboratory.

Here, Arup’s sophisticated use of 3D modelling helped meet a high bar in laboratory performance – including minimal vibration and specialised fume exhaust systems – while also meeting stringent energy-saving goals.

Looking forward

Arup helps education clients develop far-sighted responses to emerging challenges – from tackling increased competition for revenue streams to planning IT and communications infrastructure for virtual classrooms.

Our De Montfort University carbon footprinting study, for instance, responded to new requirements from the university’s UK government funder to measure ‘Scope 3’ carbon emissions. To help existing campuses evolve with educational trends and continue to function at their best, we bring expertise in planning, building design, building performance and retrofitting.

To achieve net zero targets, the world must rapidly decarbonise through smarter energy generation, supply and consumption. Arup’s technical, engineering and operational consultants are helping to shape next generation energy.

NET ZERO ENERGY & DECARBONISATION

From national networks to individual assets, the fossil fuel era is drawing to a close. At Arup, we’re helping clients across the world to make the transition to decarbonised, secure and affordable energy.

A complex transition : A successful energy transition requires collaboration across disciplines, sectors, and countries. Arup is helping clients to plan for a new energy future, undertaking in-depth scenario planning to support a resilient energy transition at the country and city level. Our work focuses on both the network-wide mix of new energy generation to implementation of specific sources. 

Our approach is multidisciplinary from the start. We carry out feasibility studies and masterplanning of new generating capacity and infrastructure, as well as the core technical engineering of new systems. We also partner with leading organisations to research future energy scenarios and support the development of the industry. 

Hydrogen: Hydrogen has the potential to be used as low carbon energy source. As a fuel, hydrogen can and must play a key role in systemic decarbonisation, increasing network resilience and accelerating the switch from fossil fuels. We’re partnering with cities, governments, energy networks and investors worldwide to kickstart the hydrogen revolution. 

From analogue to digital: the new energy network: Digital technology and systems are central to decarbonisation, enabling smarter management of demand and supply, providing user and network level insights, and the ability to control an ever more complex mix of energy sources. We are using cloud-based solutions alongside change management to support gas networks as they decarbonise and transition to hydrogen, whilst exploring how data can lead to better decision making. We’ve also supported Cadent Gas to explore digital energy systems that allow data to shape energy network operations.

New charging infrastructure: Buses, trucks and cars are increasingly powered by electric or hydrogen fuel cells, but too often the lack of charging infrastructure and energy network capacity are slowing adoption. Across the world, we are helping governments, cities and private companies to define the infrastructure and development strategies that will support the next generation of road vehicles, accelerating transport’s transition to net zero.

Zero-emission road vehicles: Transport is a significant user of energy, and so will play a key role in the energy transition. We help governments, cities and private organisations worldwide develop vital infrastructure and strategies for zero-emission vehicles – buses, trucks and cars powered by green hydrogen or batteries.

The energy transition: Energy decarbonisation needs to consider multiple factors, requiring backing from across industry, government and cities. As a trusted partner to clients, we’re involved across the entire decarbonisation effort one way or another from developing a national hydrogen strategy for Scotland to offshore wind geotechnical support for clients in Japan.

Urban energy: Cities and urban areas around the world are reshaping their energy infrastructure as they strive to decarbonise and create resilient, net-zero energy systems. Working with everyone from city leaders to energy operators, we create efficient and sustainable city wide energy solutions.

Accelerating the switch to renewables: Solar PV and offshore wind energy are gaining in efficiency and falling in costs every day – and Arup advise on every element of the structure and integration of these systems. We’re working on some of the world’s most ambitious renewable energy infrastructure, from wind power projects off the coast of America and Asia, to new solar farms in Vietnam and South Africa.

Advising and consulting: The energy sector is diversifying and investor interest in clean energy is growing daily. We advise on energy asset purchase and sales, carrying out technical due diligence and environmental impact assessments on proposed renewable energy projects. We’re also working with partners such as The World Bank and major global companies to unlock the potential of the hydrogen and offshore wind industries - informing policy change by understanding local markets and developing resilient energy strategies.  

RENEWABLE ENERGY

As countries race to reduce emissions, the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy has never been more important or economically viable. From supporting the planning of new offshore wind developments to overseeing the acquisition of solar PV facilities, our renewable energy consultants are supporting clients with the transition to net zero energy.

Renewable energy generation continues to diversify. We’re supporting clients across the onshore and offshore wind, floating and land-based solar PV, hydro-power, wave energy and geothermal markets, providing both technical solutions and advisory support. Working together with our clients, we’re shaping the future of decarbonised energy.

The renewables landscape: As an energy engineering consultancy, we work with clients to develop new approaches to generation, capacity and storage - onshore or offshore. We’re working with clients across Asia to unlock the future of offshore wind, exploring the technical requirements needed for seabed installation and evaluating the feasibility of weather conditions and the right solutions to achieving net zero energy. 

Overcoming intermittency is key to the value and viability of renewable energy systems. We are working on battery storage, resilience planning and effective system integration to help clients implement renewable sources with confidence.

Offshore wind: As the world demands secure and affordable net-zero energy, we’re supporting offshore wind development globally. With a blend of global and local expertise, we also invest in developing new tools and approaches to support the industry as it expands into new areas.

Technical and commercial expertise: Our work on new renewable energy infrastructure like offshore wind farms or solar PV arrays, draws on our wider strengths in structural and civil engineering. Clients benefit from this breadth of related expertise, from traditional engineering to data-driven tools that can manage increasingly complex renewable energy systems.

As the renewable energy industry continues to develop, new players are entering the market. We help clients across the renewable energy sector to acquire or sell renewable asset portfolios. Our advisory team provides technical due diligence, owner’s engineer roles and lender’s technical advisor roles, ensuring clients get the best value from the assets they are acquiring or selling. 

Solar PV: Utility-scale solar PV offers increasingly affordable and secure net-zero energy. Our specialist teams support clients across the entire lifecycle of solar PV projects – including planning, advisory, engineering and management.

Resilience: The switch to renewable energy results in both lower emissions but also increased complexity. Given the energy network’s pivotal role in our society and economy, affecting everything from transport to communications, establishing network resilience is critical. Threats like climate change, hacking, extreme weather and others continue to grow. Our organisational resilience team helps clients in the energy sector to map the risks and stay prepared for whatever’s next.

Our global team of designers, planners, engineers, consultants and technical specialists are highly experienced in planning and implementing world class healthcare facilities and supporting high quality healthcare operations by aligning people, processes and assets.

Healing environments

Like healthcare professionals, we are resolutely focused on outcomes, shaping healthcare environments and processes which promote healing, efficiency and resiliency. Our approach is to bring together specialists in high-performing, multi-disciplinary teams. For example, Arup’s decades long strengths in acoustics and lighting design, combined with our understanding of infection control, thermal comfort and transportation enable us to produce facilities like Australia's Alfred Intensive Care Unit. Here we brought global best practice in intensive care design to produce patient-centered areas within a tightly controlled clinical environment.

As an industry, healthcare varies greatly from one country to the next. But whether private or publically-funded, clients work with Arup because our global healthcare experience means they benefit from the world’s best ideas. Our highly collaborative, international network of specialists means we always apply the world’s highest standards and push designs harder.

Sustainable healthcare

Modern healthcare is highly energy intensive and increasing use of medical technology only adds to hospital and clinics’ operational costs. Arup takes a joined-up approach to these issues, bringing together consultancy and design expertise to produce highly sustainable environments.

At Kaiser Permanente San Diego we produced an acute care centre that creates its own energy from a micro-turbine trigeneration system and a photovoltaic solar canopy. The hospital is designed to make smart use of water, saving 5 million gallons per year. The result is the second large scale LEED platinum certified hospital in the world and a great example of how sustainability and cost-effectiveness can be designed-in from the outset.

Providing vital leadership

In this complex and rapidly changing sector, leadership is a decisive factor. That’s why Arup also supports transformational change and the development for the next generation of healthcare leaders. In 2016-17, our award-winning Emerging Leaders Programme for the UK’s NHS gave 68 clinicians and managers new systems leadership skills, helping them to realize operational efficiencies and successfully address transformational change within the NHS.

We’ve also designed and run a midwifery leadership programme in the UK, building individual and organisational skills for a new generation of midwives. By developing people we believe we gain deeper insights into the future shape of healthcare, from physical facilities to patient care processes.

Building better business

We understand the ever-changing business of healthcare, its particular procurement processes, its leadership and staffing challenges, its technology needs and its patients’ expectations. We work with healthcare authorities, providers, owners, funders, clinicians, and managers to help overcome these issues, responding with schemes that offer the greatest value in terms of investment and total cost of ownership.

At the UK’s Defence and National Rehabilitation Centre we used an integrated approach, ensuring that all key decisions on design and cost were value-driven, leading to significant capital cost savings in the design and procurement stages on this vital health facility for the armed services.

Roads have been central to economic and social development for hundreds of years. But across the world today, road operators and decision makers face many evolving challenges: increasing driver numbers, constrained budgets, asset resilience, road user safety and customers’ service expectations.

Highways are major investments and many clients come to Arup for our ability to judge financial risks, environmental impacts and overall viability. Our breadth of expertise in procurement and financing makes us the perfect partner for public or private organisations planning new road schemes or programmes. Our experience in related infrastructure, like bridges, tunnels and city planning, means we bring detailed and valuable insights to every project. In a full advisory and design role, we helped the Canadian government with the business case and supporting technical advice to start the New Champlain Bridge corridor project. We also undertake master planning at national road network level. By looking at changes in traffic demand and road users’ behaviour, we help clients develop strategies which are customer-focused, appropriate to their aspirations for level of service and within the boundaries of their budget.

The design journey

Arup has pioneered highway design for over 40 years. We design safe highways, bridges and interchanges that make sense in their surrounding context, finding new ways to cut travel times, improve road capacity, and represent the most sustainable use of materials. We’re trusted with the design and operation of some of the most significant highway and complex infrastructure projects in the world, like the Queensferry Crossing in Scotland, or the Presidio Parkway in San Francisco, USA.

Arup’s team combines depth of technical knowledge along with the latest technology and digital engineering techniques to visualise, control and streamline the highway design process, something we demonstrated on the Woolgoolga to Ballina Pacific Highway. We also use our own in-house SoundLab modelling suite to test the sonic impact of design ideas and build confidence in a proposed solution.

We support clients throughout the planning, design and construction journey, continuing to work after the highway goes into use. Arup’s end-to-end service allows us to plan a highway’s operation and maintenance, focusing on its performance, whole life costs and rehabilitation.

Shaping future journeys

In the 21st century transport has become an innovation-driven sector and clients need a partner who can help them chart a path forward. Our teams work with clients to provide specialist technical advice in response to the current-day challenges impacting on infrastructure performance; from managing a programme for ageing assets to socio-economic scenario testing to enable long-term, strategic planning.

Around the world, we are helping national road operators plan for connected and autonomous vehicles on their networks by advising on key investment decisions, transitional challenges and trialling new technologies. In the UK, Arup is leading the UK Autodrive consortium which is evaluating the complex implementation issues and business models presented by autonomous vehicles. We work with governments to develop future scenarios to help improve planning decisions and supported Highways England as they developed their first innovation, technology and research strategy identifying projects and trials to improve safety and tackle congestion on the UK’s roads.

Climate change represents another evolving threat to future journeys. In Queensland, Australia, Arup played a key role in helping rethink and rebuild the region’s roads after damaging floods and cyclones. We also achieved rapid rehabilitation of critical failing road infrastructure, like the Boston Manor viaduct in the UK. As alternative forms of energy influence our industry and electric vehicles become more prevalent, Arup’s transport and energy teams are providing specialist technical and financial advice related to the electric infrastructure which is required to support a major change in the automotive powertrain.

Rethinking mobility

A shift towards a more digital society and the advent of new vehicle ownership models are just two trends affecting how highway investments need to be evaluated. As our cities have developed and grown, transport connections have become more complex. Today, smartphone apps identify the smartest way through the traffic, providing new opportunities for mixing modes of transport and influencing new commuter behaviours.

We support hotel and leisure clients by creating distinctive, high-performance and sustainable developments. To do this, we provide a full design service, from concept to operation. Our building designers and consultants work with developers and operators around the globe – on projects that typically equate to around 25,000 rooms at any one time, and range from an eco-lodge in South Africa to the Venetian Macau, Asia’s largest single-structure hotel plus resort.

Stronger, more sustainable businesses

We shape great hotel experiences at every level, from comfort to five-star luxury and beyond. Our breadth of relevant specialist skill sets – including lighting, acoustics, audio-visual, security, vertical transportation and landscaping – allow us to contribute in a joined-up fashion to an entire project concept. They also allow us to help hotel clients to tackle the efficiency challenges of water, waste and energy and improve their overall operations.

When it comes to sustainability, corporate aspirations increasingly align with the wishes of guests, staff and the wider community. At the Hotel Amstelkwartier, Amsterdam, we developed the first LEED® platinum hotel in Europe, and designed the overall building services, fire and sustainability concept.

A fresh identity

Arup’s building design ethos matches the aspirations of hotel and leisure developers. We want to create buildings that inspire and delight, and which are responsive to people’s needs. To help operators keep pace with guests’ evolving expectations, we embed powerful IT connectivity and systems to deliver more personalised services, or engineer a hotel’s skin to create a more naturally comfortable environment inside.

Our structural and lighting specialists instil wonder with stunning forms, façades and displays, as for Abu Dhabi’s landmark Yas Hotel. The visual impact of buildings is a powerful means of expression for a global brand, or the perfect way for a boutique hotel to stand out. We have provided this reinvention through building retrofits, for projects like the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, London.

Digital natives and new expectations

The hotel and leisure sector was one of the first to be affected by consumer digital technology. Today, hotel operators need to operate in customer-centric ways, responding to guests’ increasing demand for digital room control, improved internet coverage and mobile concierge services. Arup’s digital specialists help clients to implement adaptive IT systems that can deliver delightful experiences. We also find ways to use connected sensors across a site or portfolio, to drive new operational insights and cost benefits.

Resorts that draw crowds

Leisure and resort projects require a complex mix of expertise and insight, to produce high quality experiences that are welcoming, attractive and also sustainable. We’re experts in the design of green infrastructure systems for remote, beach and island environments, including low energy and low water demand solutions. We bring a highly effective combination of project management and logistics, ecology, building physics and marine engineering to create resorts like Singapore’s vast Marina Bay Sands integrated resort.

Our International Development group is a specialist business within Arup. We work with city governments, development and humanitarian organisations, and communities to make a difference on vital projects in challenging contexts. From planning for the impacts of climate change, to rebuilding after disasters, the team is able to offer Arup’s world-renowned quality of services in a form tailored to local contexts and designed to support the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Collaboration for enduring change

Every project is a chance to share what we’ve learned. We build local capacity as we work, leaving communities better able to tackle future challenges. Long-term relationships with partners are central to this ethos. Our team provides strategic advice, assessment and evaluation services, and technical expertise to help our partners get the best results at organisational, programme or project level.

The range of our work is constantly growing as we seek to address global issues such as urbanisation, population growth and climate change. Whether we are conducting ethnographic research with young mothers in Jordan or designing digital tools to improve housing in India, accountability and participation are at the heart of everything we do.

Your international development partner

Our core team works with hundreds of people across Arup, delivering projects in the most vulnerable regions of the world. You gain the benefit of being able to tap into, and mobilise, specialists from our global network of 16,000 staff, based across five continents. Whether you operate in the private or public sector, in an academic institution or for a development bank, our aim is to provide services relevant and targeted to your project and context.

Our people have experience with leading organisations including BRAC, DAI, Médecins Sans Frontières, UN-Habitat, the World Bank and World Vision. As we typically work with multilateral banks, UN agencies, city authorities and NGOs, we ‘speak the language’ and understand the working styles of development partners and funding bodies. By working with us, you gain insights developed from working at the forefront of international development projects worldwide.

Meeting global goals

Sustainable development principles guide our decision-making and we help our partners to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other key international agreements and commitments, including the 2015 Paris Declaration on Climate Change (2015), the 2015 Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and the 2016 New Urban Agenda. We are a proud member of the UN Global Compact, bringing our principles-based approach to doing business to all of our projects and partnerships.

Our people

We are planners, engineers, researchers and advisors from a variety of backgrounds, all committed to using Arup’s technical strengths to create change in settings where resources are a challenge. Our team offers decades of international experience across the project cycle – from project scoping, assessment and design, through to delivery and evaluation – ensuring the right blend of technical skills is applied to each step of the process.

We regularly advise on port developments, evaluating economic viability and market demand, helping to build confidence in our clients’ business cases. We also design and engineer port facilities, finding cost-effective ways to add capacity and streamline operations. And our strengths in planning, environmental, geotechnical, logistics and transport consultancy mean we’re well-placed to help design a new port or overhaul existing facilities while identifying any long-term risks or opportunities.

We are the lead maritime engineering firm on the Port of Melbourne’s $1.6bn new Webb Dock, creating a new terminal capable of handling over a million containers every year.

Making the waterfront work

For buildings and leisure spaces adjacent to rivers and seas we help clients capitalise on waterside settings whilst making sure they are not vulnerable to flooding, tides, storm surges and the risks posed by climate change and rising sea levels. We have a great track record of overcoming the challenges of waterside developments to help create homes, galleries, parks and marinas as well the regeneration of quays and warehouses.

Arup’s work on Marina Bay Waterfront in Singapore, called on our experience with materials and structures, to develop a resilient and sustainable promenade.

In Scotland we provided a range of engineering services for the V&A Dundee, a geometrically complex structure which projects out into the River Tay. Maritime works included an assessment of buildability, ship impact and flood risk for the development.

Harnessing energyOur maritime skills support the energy sector in many ways, including the design of liquid natural gas and gravity bases for offshore wellhead platforms. We are also engaged on renewable energy schemes like off-shore wind farms and we were designers for the proposed Swansea Tidal Lagoon’s turbine structures.

Unique structures, new experiences

Arup’s breadth of design and engineering experience is also called upon for more experimental structures. In 2016 we collaborated on a temporary art installation called ‘Floating Piers’ in Lake Iseo in Lombardy, Italy. The piece, by Cristo and Jeanne-Claude, comprised floating piers wrapped in gold, forming sculptural links between the shoreline and an island.

Thousands of visitors ventured onto the pontoons during that summer. We played a multidisciplinary role, including maritime engineering, security consultancy, health and safety and urban planning.

Across the world, we shape and deliver major rail projects for clients in the public and private sector. Our approach combines systems-thinking, the latest technologies and decades of experience.

From a single commuter journey to a country’s wider economy, rail can transform lives, businesses and communities. And in a world trying to cope with ever-increasing demand for mobility and the effects of climate change, while adapting to rapidly evolving technology, rail is a sustainable long-term investment.

Rail projects demand a complex mix of skills and insights – from initial strategy and economics, through to engineering, people-centred design, operations and asset management. Success depends on bringing all these elements together – brilliantly. That’s why our technical expertise is always backed by sharp strategic thinking, whether we’re optimising existing assets and services, or designing whole new railways.

Connecting people to places by any mode of rail

We work across every mode of rail including high speed, metro, commuter, light rail, freight, automated people movers and monorail. It’s in our nature to take a system-wide approach at every stage of the rail lifecycle, meaning you benefit from our full range of advisory services to add value to your rail project or programme. We ensure that every rail project brings maximum benefits to the clients and communities new infrastructure serves.

Smart, intelligent rail: the future is here

Digital technology continues to redefine every sector, transforming businesses and the customer experience. From artificial intelligence and machine learning to data analytics and sensor technologies, the digital evolution is challenging the sector to rethink how to design, build, operate and maintain rail services.

By working with you to define your vision and develop a strategy, we can help you take advantage of the benefits a new connected world can bring to your business, operations and your customers.

Arup works on residential schemes that offer a better quality of life for communities, genuine value for property developers and a sustainable future for residential buildings. In some places we must consider shrinking household size and growing demand for easy access to public transport, work and urban leisure. In others, changing demographics are driving new demand for high-quality housing.

Working with leading architects and developers, Arup plans, designs and engineers residential buildings of all types. These range from bespoke single dwellings to low-cost modular housing and high-rise towers.

The new shape of living worldwide, the role of connected technologies within urban infrastructure is opening up new possibilities for connectivity and convenience in residential living. Arup’s UrbanLife report on ‘The Smart Solution for Cities’ explores how technology can also play a role in carbon reduction.

A global partner

Arup is a global network of skilled professionals, able to bring the value of proven ideas to any location. In Vietnam’s emerging quality housing market, for example, we redesigned Times Square tower to help its developer deliver high-standard serviced apartments at lower construction cost. In Brisbane, Australia, Arup’s structural and wind engineers ensured that the 488-apartment Aurora Tower copes with high winds despite its slender 219m profile and concrete frame.

In crowded cities, Arup has the ability to adapt existing building stock to meet changing needs. Our research specialists have helped policymakers to understand the technical options for retrofitting existing homes to cope with climate change. We are also skilled in sensitive refurbishments, as when creating luxury apartments alongside London’s heritage-listed St Pancras Renaissance Hotel.

For over 70 years, Arup has worked on retail projects of every size and nature, from single unit refurbishments to vast mixed-use malls. Our design skills are comprehensive and scalable. We can provide multi-disciplinary engineering design services for a vast mall or design a refined lighting scheme for a boutique experience. Whether it is our fire engineers designing effective evacuation strategies or our specialists in pedestrian flow predicting the movements of tens of thousands of people using Arup’s own MassMotion tool, we have the breadth and depth of skills necessary to meet your needs.

The bigger picture

Today, retail developments are rarely just about retail. They’re part of airports, railway stations, or other large leisure, hospitality and mixed use schemes. Arup’s wide ranging experience in all these sectors means we approach retail projects understanding the wider context, the stakeholder management issues and can foresee issues before they happen.

Arup recognises that every retail client also has their own agenda and priorities. Our collaborative global skills network ensures international brands can achieve these goals and produce consistent retail experiences worldwide. For example, our international team were able to help clothing giant Zara to simultaneously deliver new stores in Melbourne, Rome, Oporto and Barcelona.

Ready for tomorrow’s customer

In the era of the always-on digital customer, there are new pressures on retail estates to offer seamlessly connected, digital-physical experiences and to present goods in new ways. The move towards omni-channel retailing and place-making have a direct impact on the way we design retail schemes. Read our Future of Retail report, below, to learn more about what’s driving change in the retail sector.

We also support retailers with research and new ideas. The Crown Estate wanted to improve the consumer experience on Regent Street in Central London, and our public realm research showed that a shared consolidation centre could reduce lorry to store traffic by 85%. Our proposed scheme also provided attractive storage cost savings for local retailers like Banana Republic and Gap.

Arup works on the development and design of some of the most functionally demanding buildings in the scientific and industrial sector. Our mix of niche technical capability, design and commercial skill equips us to provide flexible, comprehensive services, whether for data centres or science or manufacturing facilities.

Our Expertise

Advanced manufacturing

As the authority in the development of Advanced Manufacturing facilities we bring together the innovation, research and engineering expertise to transform manufacturing processes.

Data centres & technology

Engaging with some of the most complex and data driven companies we continue to lead the way in the development of efficient and secure facilities.

Scientific research facilities

Working alongside the world’s finest scientific minds, our experts lead in the development of the most advanced scientific reseach facilities around the globe.

Fine tuning solutions

Whatever the context, we help clients adapt to their evolving challenges. We can produce lean, resilient assets and operations, or solutions that face up to uncertainties – from climate change to future markets.

The greatest sports buildings come out of creative partnerships. Arup works with leading architects and the organisers of sporting events worldwide to create venues that are as hardworking and inspiring as the sports people that use them.

Our combined design, technical and commercial expertise helps clients to realise their highest aspirations, whether in game-changing visitor experiences or legacy sports facilities.

Arup is also helping to deliver the technology that is transforming sports events. We work with developers, clubs and venue operators to plan, build and run smarter sports projects and rich visitor experiences for events, venues, sports parks or even entire sport cities. We do this with integrated specialist services in IT and communications, lighting, multimedia and broadcasting systems, security, transport and wayfinding, venue management, logistics and operational readiness.

Arup is also equipped to assist with sport’s climatic and environmental challenges, having conducted extensive research into the design of technically complex, comfortable and sustainable stadia. Never content with theory alone, we showed how a venue could be sustainably cooled and zero-carbon in practice with our 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar Showcase, a 500-seat demonstration stadium.

Commercial models

Entrepreneurial ideas are overturning traditional thinking in sports development, and producing financially sustainable facilities. Arup is helping clients to pursue new commercial models, including more flexible venues for sports and entertainment, and sports facilities embedded in mixed-use developments.

Legacies that last

Major sporting events are increasingly seen as a stimulus for investment in regeneration, jobs, housing and transport. So it is essential to design sites for sustained legacy use, long after an event has passed.

Arup’s sports projects are rarely just about building design. We provide masterplanning and site development including energy consulting, infrastructure, waste management, drainage and of all the technical systems that enable the construction of world-class sporting facilities with enduring value.

We also develop concepts to make venues themselves more adaptable. We helped make the Jaca Ice Pavilion, Spain, into an integral part of city life beyond its role in the Junior Euro Olympics. It has 12 modes of operation, from ice hockey stadium to exhibition and concert venue, using demountable seats to vary capacity.

The successful design, development and maintenance of our water infrastructure requires the integration of many disciplines. Arup’s water team has wide-ranging skills spanning advisory and specialist technical services. We apply them on every kind of project, from flood risk management and water resource planning, to dam engineering, treatment works design and river engineering.

We’ve evolved our own ‘Design with water’ methodology, drawn on our experiences designing, implementing and maintaining water infrastructure around the world. ‘Design with water’ places an understanding of the local water cycle at the centre of responses to wider local issues like economic development, food and agriculture, community and energy use. By understanding and influencing the whole water cycle, Arup has developed particular expertise that enables us to assess risks and support our clients in taking a strategic approach to water usage and management.

Prepared for the future

As our most valuable resource, the social impacts of water development decisions are of paramount importance. Arup conducts considerable research into how water can be better managed. Climate change is causing both flooding and droughts in different parts of the world, so it’s vital to be able to predict these changing dynamics. Our Future of Urban Water report is a product of our client work working with Sydney Water to forecast and plan for changing water supply and use.

Our three year research roadmap is currently focused on flooding issues, looking at the potential benefits of using green infrastructure and better catchment management. For clients, our research base means we can bring confidence to their water projects, producing beneficial outcomes for local communities and businesses. Working with our partners WRc, we also encourage and foster innovation through our Venturi platform – helping products and services with the potential to tackle major challenges in water get to market quickly.

Work with an international network

Arup’s water team work in 90 countries, collaborating across over 50 related technical and advisory disciplines. This is how we’re able to respond to such a wide range of water projects and programmes, from water treatment works in Australia, to physical engineering of the new intake tunnel under Lake Mead in Colorado. We use consultancy, engineering, and research to bring the most insightful approaches to water projects wherever they are in the world.

We bring clarity, insight and rigour to organisational decisions. Whether you’re investing in new real estate and assets, contemplating a new business model or service, or adopting more sustainable ways of working, we can help.

How we help you

Our Advisory Services team works hand in hand with Arup’s entire range of technical experts, meaning clients gain access to insights and opportunities that other consultants miss. We are economists, business strategists, environmentalists, change managers, investment specialists and digital experts – all united by the desire to produce a more sustainable future for all.

Modern organisations face complex questions. Are we investing in the right talent and assets? Are we capturing the opportunities brought about by technological change? How can we become more resilient and sustainable? Pandemics, climate change and global interdependencies are adding to the inherent challenges of running and growing successful organisations, and to maintaining successful infrastructure and economies. Our Advisory Services team works with you to bring new clarity to your situation, co-creating a strategy that will allow you to travel along a sure path.

Our work gives you the space to breathe, take a step back and make decisions that will take your organisation, your asset, or your economy forward.

How we work with you

We offer three levels of insight and expertise.

1. Foresight

Foresight offers a chance to explore the trends already reshaping your market and to use research to identify what lies ahead. Our Foresight team is a think tank for the built environment sector, able to thread multiple factors together to plot out complex future scenarios that can inform your immediate actions.

2. Client specific strategy

We deepen our understanding of your organisation and its context, before co-creating unique programmes of actions, investments, organisational or cultural change that will advance your position. We specialise in engagements that revolutionise the built and natural environment, from crafting pathways to net zero carbon to formulating inclusive economic development strategies, from quantifying the green jobs uplift of policies to developing technology roadmaps.

3. Implementation

We can bring insights to a project’s implementation, tightening the premise and supporting evidence for a given project, go-to-market strategy or investment/financing activity. As every organisation recalibrates in response to dominant global trends like digital transformation or climate change, we help translate these high-level pressures into a robust and credible plan of action, for C-suite leaders, investors, partners and regulators. In essence: we develop insights that will justify your investment in change..

Strategies in action

The best way to understand the breadth and value of our service, is to see how widely it can be applied:

Making business sustainable

The sustainable development agenda is a growing factor for all organisations, whether it’s understanding how to move to more sustainable use of resources, gaining value from waste through circular economy practices, decarbonising operations and embedding other climate change mitigations or many other related priorities. We can help you, combining business strategy with the deep technical knowledge required to model and define your response to sustainable development risks and opportunities.

Shaping the future of work

Digital automation, working-from-anywhere, collaboration by Zoom – the way we work is changing at an incredible pace. Learn how Arup is helping clients to rethink and reimagine both the way work is done and the way their real estate is designed.

In an era of rapid economic change, it’s vital to work with an advisory partner that recognises opportunities and understands how to realise long-term value. Our finance and economics team provides technical and commercial advisory services backed by rigorous economic insights. We help policymakers to make sound decisions, enabling businesses to invest or divest, pivot and grow.

We work with clients to develop business cases, robust strategies and economic policies, to make sound procurement decisions and investments, carry out technical due diligence and financial advisory, while remaining on top of the technical, economic and operational issues. Our teams are focused on sustainable investment decisions and policies – helping you to invest in new assets, upgrade existing portfolios, and focus on environmental, social and governance issues.

HOW WE HELP YOU

Economic advisory

We offer a comprehensive economic consultancy service to clients across the built environment, energy, infrastructure and transport sectors. We support companies, investors, regulators, and governments on a wide range of issues, including strategy and market design. We work with our clients at moments of change, whether it’s the development of policy, assessing the impact of major investments, informing strategic choices, restructuring a business, or increasing operational efficiency.

Our team acts as a partner to your business, applying a range of quantitative techniques, carrying out research and workshops, finding new opportunities to improve activity and exploring new business models within existing and novel arrangements.

Our advice combines a deep understanding of economic theory with detailed knowledge of relevant policy, regulation and markets, financial insight and deep technical experience. We frequently help clients with feasibility studies, vital before any major public development or project, leading to a robust financial model and sound business case. And with the increasing uncertainties driven by climate change and its associated regulation, we offer advice on the future shape of the infrastructure market.

Financial advisory

Investing in infrastructure, from fast-growing new mobility systems to tomorrow’s renewable power grids, requires a mergers and acquisitions partner that knows the sector inside and out. Arup is a lead technical advisor on major transactions, bringing our wealth of technical expertise and analytical rigour to every element of the process.

Our experience as the designers, engineers and technical consultants behind some of the world’s highest performance infrastructure, our advisory team knows how to structure deals that optimise returns and minimise risk, whether a merger, acquisition or other investment.

Every year, we help clients complete transactions worth tens of billions of dollars, working as a flexible global team that works in harmony with many different organisations’ structure and priorities. We understand the interplay of technical performance, economic ambitions and the ever-changing regulatory environment. And as the world accelerates its shift to a post-fossil fuel economy, Arup is at the forefront of the investment transition we all want to see.

Deal advisory and due diligence

Our clients invest in infrastructure or other built environment assets with confidence, knowing we bring unparalleled rigour to every transaction. As a leading global advisor, our dedicated team are experts in the assessment of deals, able to forensically probe the technical, commercial and regulatory context of a proposed investment.

Our insights identify risks, reveal opportunities and provide valuable advice about how an asset might be improved, driving better returns tomorrow – physically, operationally or both.

As the largest technical due diligence team in the sector, we build long-term relationships with major investors, banks and pension funds. Our team combines technical and commercial specialists, keen market watchers who take time to understand how a transaction can provide the returns your organisation depends on. Whichever industry you’re investing in, we have the technical expertise to analyse and profile your asset’s true potential.

PPP advisory

Public-private partnerships (P3) are an effective way of procuring public service infrastructure. Today, P3 contracts offer greater certainty on cost and scheduled outcomes as well as long term commitment to maintenance. Risks are better understood by all parties, and our approach introduces more rigour and pragmatism to the bidding process – vital for projects supported by public sector budgets.

We work as a full advisory partner on P3 projects, starting with workshops to identify organisations’ long-term goals, ranking them by priority, listening to those who will benefit from the project. We then develop the tender strategy for clients, with a service that brings together all the financial, legal, technical and insurance elements of the project.

We believe P3 contracts also offer a way to identify wider opportunities for achieving socially valuable outcomes to a project or programme – ensuring stronger public support and wider community benefits.

Sustainable investments

The environmental, sustainability and corporate governance (ESG) agenda, and the regulations that drive it, are forces that are fundamentally reshaping how industries operate, changing the investor equation. Customer and client preferences and behaviours are evolving rapidly, and the scale of impact from climate change is triggering a global revolution in investor priorities. As a purpose-led organisation with a commitment to sustainable development, Arup is helping organisations to navigate this changing landscape with confidence.

For major schemes, deft and rigorous programme and project management team are central to successful delivery. Our team are experts in coordinating complex stakeholder groups and taking your scheme from earliest idea to successful completion.

Delivering major programmes and projects with confidence

Whatever the goal at hand, bringing in a dedicated programme or project management team (PPM) offers clients many advantages. Responsible and creative leadership; insights drawn from other sectors; and the confidence of an experienced team, ready to take on the largest and most complex commissions.

Arup works with clients in every industry, providing talented teams of project managers who support projects throughout the whole building lifecycle – developing the initial business case, procurement, undertaking design management, and then construction management.

But we also go beyond a project’s core aims, drawing on our wider knowledge to add value in different ways. Depending on the project there might be opportunities to set more ambitious sustainability targets or improve the overall workplace experience. We take time to consider the possibilities, adding value but never bureaucracy or costs.

Bringing communities and users onboard

No project is ever only about numbers. That’s why we help our clients to find ways to expand the social value of their projects or investments, helping them play a more beneficial role in the communities they work in. Again, Arup’s huge range of skills and experience means we can spot opportunities others miss.

There are new ways to bring certainty to projects and programmes too. On complex infrastructure projects like the U.K.’s High Speed 2, our team were able to provide new digital and visualisation tools to help the stakeholder engagement process, engaging the communities with a better understanding of the route, the impact and the noise involved.

Taking on major programmes

On programme management commissions our perspective is even wider. Our team offer strategic advice, always taking time to relate the work at hand to clients’ other long-term goals. How does an whole estate work, viewed as a whole portfolio? Where can efficiencies and savings be produced across the whole commission? We provide a forensic, aerial view.

We help clients to decide their priorities, making sure their choices and investments are truly beneficial over the long-term. We also ensure they have the governance mechanisms to stay in control of costs and can stay forward looking.

The information opportunity

As the built environment becomes a fully digital realm, information management has become a more important business priority. Our digital services team are expert at setting up common data environments, managing clients’ overall information management requirements. We develop dashboards that bring real control over the most complex projects and programmes.

We also develop and set-up BIM models that can support clients’ ongoing post-completion operations, leading to new possibilities like the ‘digital twin’. Our visualisation experts can also find new ways to turn client information into valuable insights and services, aiding the stakeholder engagement process in new ways. Imagination is the only limitation

Effective asset management and operations are central to business success. Our advisory services team helps you to develop strategies that lead to sound management, higher returns and greater flexibility from the assets that your business depends on.

With the world economy facing continuous regulatory evolution, the need for climate adaptation, and rapidly changing customer behaviours, it’s vital to think strategically. As your advisory partner we draw on the full range of Arup’s expertise and experience to develop strategies that can help you run a more successful and sustainable business.

Technical rigour, confident returns

Capital investments in vital assets are never simple decisions. We help clients to invest in assets for long-term benefit, driven by a deep understanding of your business’s operating environment, its future risks and opportunities. With a sound strategy underpinning asset performance, you get increased value from day one operations through to higher resale asset values at their end-of-life.

For those investing in new assets we provide technical and financial assistance throughout the process – investment decisions should be backed by the technical advice that can deliver the returns you need.

Protecting value for longer

As the world economy adapts to the requirements of net zero emissions, the danger of ‘stranded’ or diminished value assets is a growing risk. Our teams help you think creatively about these problems, finding ways to pivot assets’ use, identifying second or third lives for the same assets.

As businesses find ways to transition away from the fossil fuelled economy, it’s vital to avoid waste by retaining and reusing assets and infrastructure. When Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power station reached its final 4 years of operation, we helped the UK government to define a new masterplan for the site, prioritising reuse of the plant’s existing assets and local social renewal, as well as promoting wider economic uplift of the East Midlands area.

Intelligence and reporting

There’s great business intelligence to be drawn from assets’ performance. From energy use to maintenance requirements to health and safety benchmarks, with an asset intelligence platform you can improve reporting on KPIs for regulators, investors and clients alike. It helps boardrooms to make more informed choices and ultimately leads to more nimble and effective management. In Queensland, Australia we’ve developed machine learning-based tools to better predict and manage highway repairs, optimising road performance while better managing costs.

Staying ahead of regulation

Businesses and organisations operate in an increasingly regulated world. Once voluntary declarations are becoming mandatory reporting and complex issues like climate change or environmental damage are leading to complex and thoughtful responses from businesses.

We help clients to find ways to adapt their operations to meet new goals or targets. Our ethos is that asset management is always a powerful way to address both your specific business goals while meeting wider priorities, from efficient resource and energy use to improving biodiversity. And as ever, data analytics are vital to capturing, managing and analysing this level of performance.

Building day-to-day resilience

After a year of global pandemic, the growing importance of resilience – operational, physical, technical and personal – is clear to everyone. For our asset management teams, resilience means knowing you’re ready to respond to sudden changes while also planning for emerging trends.

We prepare clients by providing a level of analysis that brings clarity to the real threats they face, whether its site selection for new infrastructure, or building the business case for investments in alternative supplies of key materials.

Intelligent asset management strengthens the resilience of your entire business or organisation.

Organisation – the people factor

Every organisation is a complex combination of people and resources. And beyond the assets themselves, managing the operational and design aspects of a new asset, service or environment is central to success. We help organisations in many different sectors, from rail and aviation to leisure and hospitality, to take a human-centred approach to this kind of business change and the solutions we develop.

Our team also make extensive use of digital, risk-based prioritisation models, providing new levels of insight into the growing range of issues senior leaders must stay ahead of.

Across the built environment and infrastructure sector, large and complex organisations are delivering critical national services, from rail networks to energy grids or water systems. It’s a sector that values high performance while often having to overcome institutional and organisational friction. It’s also a sector that has to balance commercial imperatives with the need to meet government targets, in an environment where contractual commitments keep evolving.

Our People and Organisations team are specialists in helping these bodies to find better ways of working, leading to a shared culture within a joint venture or public/private partnership.

With so many intersecting global trends now assailing business – from digital transformation to flexible working to the accelerating transition to net zero operations – our team helps clients to define the best way forward and achieve the desired change and improvement.

Our work responds to five strategic challenges in the built environment:

• Collaboration across complex organisations: we help multi-stakeholder and joint-venture organisations to adopt common working practices and deliver major projects.
• Higher performance teams: we coach and advise leaders on how to hire, develop and run high performance teams.
• Sustainability as a culture: we craft effective sustainability strategies, to embed behaviours that create the desired culture.
• Improved resilience: we can help you to understand and respond to existing vulnerabilities or weaknesses in skills, supply chains, or operations, discovering new opportunities for growth in the process.
• Digital transformation: we develop human-centred digital transformation strategies that start with people, their skills, behaviours and productivity.

Become effective collaborators

In most major projects, collaboration is a clear priority, yet difficult to achieve. Beyond hiring the right people with the right skills and experience, you need to be organised in a way that promotes real understanding, cooperation and innovation. We often work with partnerships or joint-ventures who need to quickly develop effective cross-team working, overcoming the diverging elements of different, pre-existing corporate cultures.

Develop high-performance teams

High-performance teams are central to delivery of every major built environment or infrastructure project. Clients ask us, ‘do we have the right people, and are we developing them in the right way?’ They want our help to determine that their organisation is the right shape for the goals they have set themselves. On major capital programmes, it’s also vital that leaders have the right skills, and can overcome internal organisational boundaries when needed, while delivering within the desired governance structures.

We’ve been leading a successful London Underground customer service improvement programme for the last 3 years, with clear targets to both drive up internal engagement and improve the passenger experience. We mapped the customer experience and used psychological analysis to gain deeper insights into the workplace experience across the network.

We also provide valuable external direction on major change programmes or new business directions. Faced with the need to grow their network operation, Caltrain, the Californian mass transit operator asked us to conduct an organisational assessment of their entire operation, finding ways to improve their talent and attraction processes. We also improved the level of collaboration, ensuring innovation was being encouraged, while helping them to operationalise a new business plan, target operating model and workforce plan.

Gain a culture of sustainability

As the world races to achieve a net zero economy and sustainability reshapes every business decision, many leaders are confronting the need for cleaner, greener and more sustainable assets and operations. Even with clear targets and the most talented team in place, real and enduring change means mobilising your entire organisation in unfamiliar ways. Our organisational experts can help you to implement an effective sustainability strategy, putting in place the right governance and organisational structure, supported by the relevant roles, culture and rewards.

Digital transformation is people-led

Successful digital transformation is about far more than investing in technology. We help clients to realise the advantages of digital at the people and experience level – that means aligning investments in technology with training, skills and related cultural change. We help organisations think through the cultural and operational implications of digital transformation, whatever form it takes in your market or sector.

Build resilience, agility, and wellbeing

For an organisation to be truly resilient, its people must develop adaptive capacity. That means that when the underlying operating environment changes, the organisation and its people are able to adapt and change, remaining productive and profitable.

Issues like the global pandemic and the growing effects of climate change, present challenges to every kind of organisation. These issues also bring clarity to existing strengths and weaknesses, as well as revealing new opportunities, particularly around ways of working. We are helping clients in many different sectors to navigate and respond to these significant changes, finding ways to preserve and extend an organisation’s culture in a world of flexible working.

Establishing organisational resilience

Organisational resilience is the ability of an organisation to anticipate, prepare for, respond and adapt to change and sudden disruptions. We support our clients to create a comprehensive understanding of the resilience of their organisation or asset through a 5-step approach.

Sustainable development and the growing impact of climate change are now priorities for every kind of business. Organisations are rethinking supply chains, trying to avoid stranded assets, anticipate regulatory change, and make investments in nature and the built environment that will deliver economic, social and environmental benefits in this rapidly changing business context.

Arup helps clients to respond to climate change risks, make more sustainable use of resources, and amplify the social value of their organisations’ activities and practices. We help them prioritise and adopt approaches aligned to internationally recognised ESG standards. We also help clients to invest sustainably, in nature, buildings and assets that will retain value long into the future. And we increasingly help clients to adopt circular economy principles within their operating or productive models.

Responding to this global economic agenda involves a new level of organisational and cultural change. Mastering it will ensure your business remains relevant, profitable and responsive to clients and customers alike while also delivering positive environmental and societal outcomes.

How we can help

Every organisation is at a different point in dealing with this new landscape and its complex drivers. Arup’s breadth of advisory and technical knowledge means we can produce insights relevant to every operational element of your organisation.

We can help in five ways:

Define your ESG strategy

We work with you to establish both your existing exposure to climate change risk, and the wider opportunities of embedding a tailored ESG strategy within your organisation.

Strategies are not one-off documents, and our most valuable work is conducted in long-term partnerships, where we can help clients to evolve and improve over time, letting ESG shape corporate culture. Find out how we’ve been helping the UK’s Crown Estate to embed sustainable practices across its considerable real estate portfolio.

Analyse and explore your market/sector

Foresight is Arup’s in-house trend analysis service, carrying out research that provides new market insights and problem-solving business intelligence.

As new global trends – from hydrogen power to decarbonisation to circular economy business models – continue to multiply and converge, we can be your knowledge partner. We act as a bridge, helping you to learn from and collaborate with new partner organisations. Together, we can turn new theories into practical actions, and position you for future success.

Identify operational and social priorities

We can help you to operate more sustainably – whether that’s in terms of energy and resource use, asset optimisation or carbon emissions reductions. Our technical and advisory team can carry out carbon footprint analysis, energy audits and benchmark your business, bringing clarity to decision making at all levels.

Of course, sustainable development advisory doesn’t simply mean dealing with CO2 emissions. Our sustainability teams help clients to identify the most relevant and socially valuable actions their business is ready to take, from greening their estates to embedding community benefits within their business model.

Invest sustainably and profitably

Today’s investment equations are more and more complex. A pandemic and a growing awareness of the impacts of climate change and depletion of natural resources are transforming the way investors approach real estate and infrastructure investments. New financial realities like the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures and the EU’s Sustainable Finance Taxonomy are reshaping the way the global economy approaches decision making in profound ways.

Reporting and disclosure

ESG reporting and disclosure are not only regulatory requirements, they can help your organisation to learn and communicate progress in these vital areas of operation. They’re an opportunity to both assure investors and embed cultural change, taking a wider view of success than simple financial performance.

Our team helps you to take an organisation-wide approach to this important task, combining our communications and technical expertise to present your data and progress as transparently and effectively as possible.

It’s time to climate-calibrate your organisation

As the existential threat of climate change gathers in scale and impact, it’s clear that every organisation will eventually have to become ‘climate calibrated’. The regulatory landscape will tighten, consumer and client preferences will harden and what is a choice today, will become a requirement tomorrow. In the built environment, new accreditation standards that focus on embodied carbon and in-use energy performance are replacing well-established sustainability accreditations schemes. These new approaches will soon be vital for resale, the future preservation of investor capital and the avoidance of stranded assets.

We can help your organisation to move beyond these existing site-based standards, to define and implement climate calibrated principles consistently across your services, manufacturing, production and other business activities. Now is the time to demonstrate leadership, set new market standards, and get ahead of future regulation – whatever sector you operate in.