Planning & Consulting

An opportunity exists for your organisation and community to grow in profound ways. You can envision the outcome, the capital and the talent to make it a reality, but you face many key questions. Before you begin, and to be successful, you need to validate your ideas and put a well-developed plan in place. As your partner, we’ll work closely with you to locate the solution, but we’ll go further and help you seamlessly transition into its design and construction. And we’ll help you keep pace with today’s rapidly changing marketplace by guiding you to the right decisions to meet your overarching goals and objectives.

Condition assessment serves as the core of a well-run infrastructure management program. It determines the state of your assets and helps you collect data for optimising your maintenance strategies. The goals include protecting public health and safety, extending asset life, reducing incidence of failure, and saving money.

Disasters strike. Floods, earthquakes, wildfires, tornadoes and hurricanes all pose significant risks to the integrity of your assets. Our mission is serving you during these times of need. We engage from planning through rebuilding and every step along the way. You can trust us — knowing that we only work in areas where we have the right service history, cultural alignment, skills and approach to make a difference. Whether you are out in front of the storm or in the middle of fighting the flood, we’ll be there.

We approach programming with a twofold goal: to identify the quantity, type and size of spaces, as well as the desired experiences for their occupants. We customize our interdisciplinary methodology for each project, fully exploring our clients’ visions for their spaces. We apply strategies for best practices, evidence-based design, emerging technologies, and key drivers. We use parametric cost modelling to quickly compare multiple design options and their programmatic components to arrive at a recommended solution. Our inclusive and transparent process builds a high degree of stakeholder participation and confidence.

Where we previously relied on basic mapping to form conclusions about a place, we now use advanced tools, statistical analyses and modeling techniques to take a deeper look at the environmental, social, and economic factors — the whole picture. Before a program is funded, permit is granted, or shovel is turned, our skilled professionals thoroughly analyze and document the findings and successfully collaborate with scientists and clients to develop meaningful work products. The result: a comprehensive framework that allows you to more confidently proceed with your building and infrastructure plans, and accommodates your future needs.

We integrate research and collaboration into every step of our decision-making and planning process. Our health and clinical planning teams, including architects and designers, work on projects of all scales, from small renovations to large medical campuses. We provide valuable planning solutions through a research-based, data-driven approach, engaging clients in an interactive process that fosters consensus building and deep investigation of care models and their relationship to the built environment. Health and Clinical Planning

The most successful design projects link the goals of an organisation with a comprehensive master plan demonstrating how facilities can support those endeavours. We provide useful and relevant benchmarking data to assist our clients in their planning efforts, ranging from the macro-level (multiple sites, campus) to the micro-level (facility, space). Through understanding potential outcomes of various scenarios, our planning efforts help predict with greater certainty a range of possibilities that encourage long-term sustainable solutions.

For over 40 years, we’ve guided clients through critical decisions on equipment budgeting, procurement and installation, ensuring seamless integration with future technology. Our multidisciplinary team, with expertise in architecture, nursing and radiological engineering, collaborates to deliver innovative and efficient medical equipment planning. By focusing on safe and flexible solutions, we allow healthcare providers to concentrate on patient care without concerns about their equipment needs.

We believe that a significant factor in helping make healthcare more affordable is to contain costs, especially those related to inefficiencies in how a building facilitates the work of its users as well as how it functions from an operations standpoint. Armed with the knowledge of current operations along with aspirational future state operations, we design new operating models that minimise waste and variation—leading to repeatable and reliable processes. Using techniques such as Lean process improvement, virtual simulation modeling and iterative facility design, we’re able to maximize efficiency and create intentionally designed experiences.

Our goal is to make data intelligible, meaningful and actionable. We create data-driven foundations for planning and decision-making by integrating all available information. We do this using sophisticated methods and building flexible models tailored to each client’s unique situation. We model demand and our client’s capacity to meet that demand, flexing and adapting to consider a wide range of market and strategic scenarios.

Our full-service community engagement and creative practice helps you build more connected, equitable, and sustainable communities. We pull together the top minds and resources across the globe for a holistic approach to public involvement strategy and communications that put people first in planning and infrastructure projects.

We understand the intricacies of implementing the correct security measures in a facility, within a campus, across a city or around the world. Because security technologies work best when seamlessly integrated with other technologies, we provide integrated solutions and a unified infrastructure strategy that uses less space and energy, needs less manpower to operate and creates a more globally efficient system, with greatly reduced downtime. Our expertise includes access control, intrusion detection, video surveillance monitoring, video recording, electronic inspection, and parking garage vehicular control.

We work with our clients’ staff to help them adapt to new facilities with an emphasis on delivery of service and improved processes and procedures. This process begins during CA and continues beyond the facility opening. We can assist with facility readiness, move planning, education, training and simulations. Our goal is to integrate change management activities with design efforts to maximise their facility investments.

Better planning helps you be more strategic and sets the stage for innovation. Our collaborative transportation planning process involves input from all users including relevant agencies, private businesses, community groups, environmental organisations and the public at large. We  take what we learn and apply a comprehensive, multimodal approach to analysing the alternatives and impacts. Then we define future policies, goals, investments and designs. The result is a strategic plan that everyone can get behind. Taking an innovative approach helps to move people and goods more effectively and efficiently today and in the future.

We believe great urban and regional design is always uniquely tied to its place: culturally, socially, and physically. It derives its energy from a framework of elements, including demographics, ethnography, cultural drivers, the natural environment and the aspirations of the community’s shared vision. Our multidisciplinary team of planners, architects, engineers, landscape architects, and other design professionals collaborate to promote and advance the concepts of place-making and community. We explore all economic, human, political, legal, environmental and aesthetic issues necessary to improve quality of life and build a sustainable future.

Our proven approach to O&M facility planning and design has been refined by more than 800 custom facility projects amid a variety of urban and rural backdrops. Many of our first-ever design features have gone on to set industry standards. They have also helped earn our O&M facility practice a reputation for innovative, functional and sustainable outcomes that improve operations and enrich their communities. Learn more