Community engagement

We desire to shape a future where everyone can live in a safer, more resilient, and inclusive world. Every year, we enable our people to use their skills on a myriad of valuable projects that improve local infrastructure, build capability, support economic prosperity and produce a better quality of life.
 
Beyond our client work, we believe it is just as important that those with the greatest unmet needs also benefit from our insights and services. Our priority is to ensure that the projects we co-create and solutions we propose, deliver lasting value to communities. To achieve this, we collaborate with a range of charities, community-based organisations, and institutions. These partnerships allow us to design and implement projects that resolve the immediate problem and influence system change. 

Our work in 2022-23

Explore below for examples of how our community engagement work contributed to positive outcomes across the world during 2022-23.

Making an impact

Whether it is initiatives to build bridges, improve access to nature, or disaster recovery after flooding, we are always looking for ways to improve the lives of those most in need.

Ensuring access to essential infrastructure

Every thriving community relies on an array of reliable and vital infrastructure. Our community engagement supports the development of local health clinics, school buildings, off-grid energy systems, and water and sanitation systems. Our approach ensures that solutions are community-driven and suited to the local context. 

Providing access to safe and affordable shelter

Safe and affordable homes should be available to everyone. We address this issue by assessing the quality of housing, designing alternative housing, and building local capacity. Our shelter projects can be in cities where we have offices, in distant rural communities, or camps for displaced people. Our partners range from local community-based charities, to national advocacy organisations, to international agencies.

Humanitarian response

Wars, famines, and climate change effects continue to displace millions of people globally. Single events rapidly lead to cascading challenges: hunger, lack of shelter, failed infrastructure, restricted access to clean water and education. We get involved through our global community engagement programme, working alongside relevant local and international NGOs and supported by our own international development team. 

Arup has been supporting medical humanitarian NGO, Médecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) since 2012. MSF is respected for its contribution of health and medical services in conflict zones and in countries facing endemic diseases. Arup members provide pro-bono support through their technical engineering, design, and sustainable development expertise, as well as broader (non-technical) professional skills, to enable MSF doctors and clinicians to work safely and with confidence so their focus can remain on supporting those most in need.  

Our work has included developing a predictive model for malaria, reviewing MSF’s environmental roadmap (to help the organisation measure, monitor and reduce carbon emissions and meet carbon reduction targets), and providing specialist post-earthquake engineering support after the earthquake in Turkey and Syria in February 2023. Since 2019, Arup and MSF have worked together on a range of projects to support MSF operations in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Mali, Nigeria, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.  

Designing tools to enable sustainable development

As designers, engineers and technical specialists, we bring a breadth of problem solving creativity to community challenges. That means developing products and approaches that address day-to-day issues like access to potable water and sanitation or how to cope with the rising temperatures caused by climate change, such as our Cool Roofs toolkit which makes cool roof innovation accessible to the people who are most at risk from heat stress. 

Talk to us

Last year we worked with 200+ organisations ranging from international NGOs and local governments to community interest companies and local community organisations. If you would like to find out more or get involved, please get in touch.