Partnerships
We can't shape a better world alone. That is why we partner with others. Our strategic partnerships tackle the big challenges facing industry, communities, and the planet.
Our strategic partnerships programme allows us to confront complex problems that threaten the future of built and natural environments.
Through our partnerships we transcend conventional client-consultant and private sector-civil society dynamics to achieve positive, systemic change.
Partnership complements our project work, enabling us to gain insights and co-create solutions that are of value to our clients and the wider world. Our partnering approach also represents another route to pursuing our purpose: to create safe, resilient and regenerative places that allow current and future generations to thrive.
Decarbonising the built environment
The built environment accounts for around 37% of global energy-related carbon emissions.
As a leader in the planning and design of the built environment, we work with others to develop industry-wide approaches for standardised carbon accounting and whole life carbon assessment.
Strengthening resilience
Pressures are intensifying on the systems that citizens, communities and nations rely on.
We recognise that the ability to maintain and enhance the resilience of critical systems is fundamental to our expertise as a built environment leader. For this reason, several of our partnerships focus on advancing approaches to adaptation, resilience, and recovery for essential infrastructure.
- Offering cities a structure way for managing water supply and water-related hazards through the City Water Resilience Approach, as part of our partnership with the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI).
- Demonstrating the role of distributed renewable energy as a central pillar of urban resilience, part of our work with the Resilient Cities Network.
Accelerating the energy transition
Transformation of the global energy sector is well underway. This transition to an electrified world will both safeguard the planet and rewire the global economy.
Our partnerships include a focus on energy transition, through which we prioritise innovation in the upgrading, expansion and digitalisation of electricity networks.
- Demonstrating the feasibility, competitiveness, and reliability of wind- and solar-dominant power systems with the Energy Transition Commission.
- Exploring how ports can be critical enablers of the energy transition by becoming hubs for offshore wind, sustainable fuels and transport electrification with C40 Cities.
Establishing circular systems
A third of emissions from the built environment sector stem from the extraction, manufacture, and transportation of construction materials.
We partner with and convene leading businesses within the construction sector to co-create viable solutions that will allow this industry to transform itself and its impacts.
- Facilitating collaboration across the built‑environment value chain through the Circular Leaders Group, scaling circular business models and accelerating sector-wide transformation.
- Helping designers, construction clients and asset owners understand how to adopt vastly more sustainable development practices with the Circular Buildings Toolkit, co-developed with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
Partner publications
Explore what we've produced with our partners
Why ports have a future as green energy hubs
Power Systems Transformation: Delivering Competitive, Resilient Electricity in High-Renewable Systems
Achieving net-zero buildings: An action plan for market transformation
Unlocking value in buildings: developing the business case for building circular
Learn more about our partners:
