Back to About

Community engagement

There is always a strong connection between the built, natural and social environments. Our community engagement programme enables our people an opportunity to work with local communities to address all three.

Community engagement is an opportunity to serve those with the greatest unmet needs. Our priority is to ensure that these projects 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 immediate problems and shape long-term change.

Snapshot

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

227+

Projects delivered in 2022-2023

53,000+

Hours volunteered in 2022-2023

1m+

people reached through our work in 2022-2023

Making an impact

Whether we are building bridges, improving access to nature, or aiding recovery after natural disasters, we are always looking for ways to improve the lives of those most in need.

Bridges to prosperity: visualisation tool to support local connectivity

Bridges to prosperity, Rwanda

Transforming school grounds into centres for nature-based learning and climate resilient design

Climate ready schools, Canada

Helping communities recover after the 2021 floods

Post flood assessments, Germany

Ensuring access to essential infrastructure

Reliable infrastructure is central to a thriving community. Our CE programme has contributed to the development of local health clinics, school buildings, off-grid energy systems, and water and sanitation systems, in many different parts of the

Case study: WaterUp

An approach community water management

In collaboration with The Flow Partnership and WaterAid, the WaterUp project actively engages with rural communities in drought-stricken areas to understand their needs, unique challenges, WaterUp aims to address this by producing language-neutral, digital educational materials for communities, providing them with techniques to catalyse landscape restoration

Project facts

1,700 people received improved water access
15% Increase in vegetation cover

Providing access to safe and affordable shelter

Safe and affordable housing 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.

Margaret River’s wine, food and surf culture attract over 1 million visitors a year. The short term nature of the economy means homelessness is an ever present threat. We are using our experience in community and stakeholder engagement to help the local authorities, developers, planners and advocacy groups define a collective answer to a common problem.

Improving social mobility

We believe in sharing our expertise as widely as possible. Our partnerships with education providers and participation in mentoring schemes makes up a major part of our local engagement work. Our work includes STEM outreach in schools, tutoring in after-school clubs, co-creating education resources, mentoring young people aiming for university, and helping adults requiring support to secure skilled jobs.

Case study

Improving rural access to education in China

Access to knowledge enables children to broaden their horizons, fulfil their potential and transform their lives. In 2018, we supported Sowers Action in the construction of Chuansi Village Arup SA-PH Primary School in Yunnan, southwest China.

To further develop the school’s resources, we returned to set up a new library and hosted classes with students in 2019. Our Hong Kong Knowledge Centre tailored a book numbering system for easy book ordering and stock control. Within two days, Arup’s volunteers stocked and shelved the library with over 6,500 books.

To ensure its future resilience, we also held a workshop for teachers and student librarians to show them how to maintain and operate the library and nurture a culture that inspires life-long love of reading.

Humanitarian responses

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

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.

Get in touch with 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.