Collaboration is the driving force underpinning everything we do at Arup, and this issue of @4 investigates the opportunities and rewards that offers our staff, clients, and the wider community.
Renowned management thinker Margaret Heffernan, in her TED Talk, ‘Why it's time to forget the pecking order’, highlights a challenge faced by an Arup engineer working on the Beijing Olympics Equestrian Centre, a problem they hadn’t faced before - how much waste do thousands of highly strung horses produce? Rather than spend weeks calling vets and breeders, doing calculations and making estimates, they put the problem on the Arup skills network forum.
Within hours, a response arrived from a fellow engineer halfway around the world who also happened to have worked on an equestrian facility and had already resolved that issue. Sharing experience and knowledge and strengthening professional connections along the way, our skills network highlights our collaborative approach to problem solving.
Arup has over 12,000 people working around the world, so if you come across stumper or are looking for a new solution to an old problem, there’s usually someone a few key-strokes away that can help.
In this issue of @4, Marianne Foley shares her own experience with the skills network solving complex fire engineering problems. Dr. Robert Care AM, contemplates the inextricable links between the future of engineering and the future of society. Arup Design School, another ongoing collaboration tool, investigated the idea of design for social change.
This issue also presents the findings of the Australian Consumer Water Survey, introduces Priscilla Radice ex-Brisbane Ports as our Australasia Ports Business Leader, and considers issues of lighting in urban design, noise in infrastructure development, and projects from around the region.