Digital every step of the way

Work, transformed

From understanding client requirements and assimilating feedback, to engaging the public or managing large quantities of project information, digital tools are transforming our work. They also bring our clients and creative teams into closer collaboration throughout a project, helping to produce a built environment that is ever more human, sustainable and beautiful.

Virtual consultations

Public consultation is a vital stage of many projects, a moment to explain a scheme, listen to community viewpoints and build support. Our Virtual Engage platform takes this traditionally analogue ‘in-person’ process and moves it online, expanding the number of people who can learn and comment. As a tool and a process, it allows us to understand requirements more comprehensively than before, leading to more inclusive design solutions.

Learn more about Virtual Engage

Visualising success

Our visualisation team produces compelling 3D models, immersive environments, simulations and other digital experiences to help clients explore their schemes in sensory detail. These visually rich, virtual simulations bring people closer to designs, build public confidence and stakeholder support throughout the lifecycle of a project or programme. In essence, seeing is understanding.

Designing experiences

As digital technologies grow in power, they’re changing what we expect from the built environment. We always strive to find the right balance between the physical role of the building and the digital services that will be operated within it.

Experience design is our way of bringing together the physical and digital elements of a project at the earliest stages. We take a human-centred design approach – conducting ethnographic research and user workshops, before prototyping and testing.

Find out more about our experience design work

Managing information

In the built environment industry, the success of major schemes depends on up-to-date information, reflective of the latest design changes, shared documentation, and the ability for large groups to track progress. Our digital project portal, Arup Fuse, allows teams to share detailed physical information about a site and its assets, add photos, list risks, asset, stakeholders, share drone footage, LIDAR scans and site images. As a single source of truth, one that aligns the design team and provides the client with access to data, it has great value on complex, multi-organisation projects and programmes.

Fuse has been central to our station improvement work for clients like Auckland Light Rail,  Transport for Wales, and Major Road Projects Victoria, building a more detailed view of a project’s many assets and their condition. Ultimately, by adding more and more layers of data about a project and its impact, we can help clients to achieve socially valuable outcomes.