Making sustainable design more accessible for architects at Arcadis

Executive summary 
* A global leader in design and engineering, Arcadis is advancing its sustainability ambitions to become a net zero company by 2035. Doubling down on these efforts demands new ways for architects to integrate and scale up sustainable design in every project and navigate the increasing complexity of the built environment. 
* As such, the architecture and urbanism team see potential in new digital tools like Autodesk Forma to help integrate sustainable design in the early project phases when it’s easier and more cost-effective to do so.  
* Using Forma, architects can run Forma’s environmental analyses for themselves and track targeted sustainability goals in real time. The new skills developed here enable the team to evaluate sustainable design issues much earlier, improving dialogue with the sustainability teams. The overall result makes sustainable design more accessible for architects. 

Improving quality of life: Arcadis’ mission is to enhance the wellbeing of the communities in which it operates. A global leader in design and engineering, Arcadis is strategically strengthening its digital and sustainability offering to its clients in line with, and as a member of, the United Nations Global Compact, the UN’s initiative to ‘accelerate and scale the global collective impact of business.’ The company counts on new technology and a long-term partnership with Autodesk to continue growing the business and lowering the environmental impact of its operations and projects. “Digital Empowerment is one of the three pillars of the Arcadis strategy. Our goal is to improve our business and client delivery by integrating new technologies and ways of managing data into our existing solutions,” says François Appéré, Global Autodesk Platform Director at Arcadis. “Autodesk plays a big role in our digital journey as a major engineering applications provider; we have a strong commitment to work together with Autodesk and our partners to provide world-class digital solutions to our clients.”  

Rethinking the way of working 
For Arcadis, the goal in sight is being a net zero company by 2035. So how do architects then start to translate these high-level climate goals into actionable processes for each project? Given the long-term nature of construction projects, this puts more pressure on projects to be designed for zero carbon today to meet tomorrow’s targets. All this adds to the ever-increasing complexity of construction projects, explains Appéré but that’s where technology has potential to support the company’s efforts. “As designers, we are expected to develop the best solutions for our clients, combining diverse components such as climate resilience, carbon impact, and societal integration. Technology is here to unlock those complex challenges, providing project teams with tremendous analytics power.” 
   
Doubling down on sustainability efforts demands new ways to integrate and scale up sustainable design in every project. At the same time, architects are being forced to rethink their role and way of working–in every profession, change is never easy. Caoimhe Loftus, Architect and Associate at Arcadis explains: “Architects have traditionally been generalists and not sustainability experts. But our role has expanded in that all of us must embrace sustainable design now to meet the high, and much needed, goals for reducing emissions in our industry. However, it can be easy to get overwhelmed with the challenges of designing sustainable projects.”  

Knowing how to get started and having the right knowledge and tools are often obstacles. “How do we set sustainability targets and what tools do we use to then keep the project on track?” Loftus continues. “Few architects have workflows with the right tools and processes that allow us to stay on top of sustainability from the very start of a project.”

This is exactly what Loftus and her colleagues at Arcadis are tackling and where they see the potential of new digital tools like Autodesk Forma to unlock new opportunities for integrating sustainable design already in the early project phases. 

A new shift 
Often, sustainable design is traditionally considered later in the design process. The same goes for collaborating with sustainability teams. However, Loftus explains that shifting this earlier in the project lifecycle will be key to their new approach.  

“In the early design phases, we make decisions that will impact our projects through their lifetime. It’s essential that we understand their environmental impact from the beginning of the design process, at a point when it is easier and more cost-effective to address sustainability. In later phases, as the design becomes more complex, it’s harder to undo design decisions with later interventions likely to result in costly and timely rework, which blow out budgets and deadlines.” 
 
However, as with any change, there comes the opportunity to upskill. Pablo La Roche, PhD, LEED AP BD+C and Director of Sustainable Design Services at Arcadis, explains: “While architects have an increasing knowledge of sustainability, they may not necessarily have the technical skills required to use the different tools that allow us to test proposed strategies.”  

Often these specialised tools are more complex and less accessible for architects, especially at early-stage design. This is where Forma can be scaled up and used to better enable the architects to run initial environmental analyses themselves and help them to design with sustainability in mind from day one. 
   
Bridging gaps to prioritize sustainability  
In a nutshell, it’s about bridging gaps–in project phases and skills–and lowering the barrier to entry for architects by simplifying sustainable design processes and introducing tools that are easy to use. Empowering architects with these new skills will enable them to create greater impact with their projects from the outset.  

Appéré: “Most engineering software is become increasingly complex to use. Users require more and more expertise, training and time to fully leverage technology. The power of Forma is its ease of use and access. For us, it’s key in tomorrow’s architectural and engineering projects. The adoption of Autodesk Forma will help our teams to quickly sketch and design assets in the context of their surroundings and provide multi-criteria analysis very early in the design process.”  

“Autodesk Forma gives us the opportunity to put sustainability components at the center of all the solutions we develop, supporting our journey towards digital and sustainable leadership.” 
François Appéré, Global Autodesk Platform Director at Arcadis

Simplifying sustainable design  
The team devised an early phase workflow with a focus on operational energy–this makes sense given that of the 40% of global emissions from the building industry, 27% is related to operational energy, the energy that is consumed in our buildings.  

“Often people don’t know where to start, so we proactively provide tools and resources that help them work through a recommended workflow,” says Loftus.  

There are 3 steps:  
 
1. Set Energy Use Intensity (EUI) targets: it’s important to set these as early as possible and continue tracking progress throughout the project to work towards achieving goals.  

2. Identify climate: Understanding each site’s climate and relevant design strategies for heating and cooling are vital to designing environmentally-responsible and site-sensitive buildings. La Roche and the team that now make up part of Arcadis’ architecture and urbanism team created ClimateSCOUT for this very purpose – the open-source platform helps its users design buildings that uniquely respond to a site by providing climate-specific design advice at the building scale. 

3. Analysis: Use Forma to analyze your massing studies with a focus on reducing operational energy and then maximising solar energy production to offset energy use.  
 
See below for more information about the workflow which was presented by Caoimhe Loftus and Simon Irgens at Autodesk University 2023.

Early indications, informed decisions 
Using early insights from Forma about different factors from sun and daylight to microclimate and operational energy (one of Forma’s predictive Machine learning analyses) the team can explore and test more designs and propose solutions faster thanks to live feedback. With the analyses at hand, the team can assess their designs early and often with metrics that help them monitor the project to meet their goals. Impressive results have already been achieved. In one project, the team is using Forma’s solar energy analysis to optimize the placement and size of vertical fins on a facade to find the right balance between the design aesthetics, the cost-efficiency and how energy production is maximised. Meanwhile, early insights into microclimate and wind flows enabled another team to better design a masterplan in a warm climate (below) where the flow of cooling winds could be encouraged further throughout the neighborhood.  

For the architects, having this early knowledge has improved their dialogue with the sustainability team, advancing discussions about sustainable design strategies much earlier.

La Roche adds, “Instead of sustainability advisors telling architects how to do things, we are now beginning with them and hearing first how they see sustainability working in their projects, which put us on the front foot and allows for richer, more robust conversations and quicker progress.”  

Having confidence in a design, explains Loftus, has been a big plus: “Architecture can involve a level of assumptions and hypothesizing. So having the ability to test and validate our designs and know for certain what we are proposing is going to work is hugely valuable and reassuring both for us and our clients, because we know when we get to site things will work as intended and we won’t have to go back and rework these elements after the fact.” 

To give projects a head start and maximize their chances of meeting ambitious sustainability goals, La Roche suggests that a climate analysis is the first thing architects should do. Secondly, the team should be empowered to evaluate sustainable design issues as early as possible.

The pressure on La Roche’s team is only increasing due to more specific client demands. “Clients are doing work in locations where there are stricter requirements for sustainability. Now there’s more understanding of the importance of sustainability and everybody from the cities and states to funding agencies and banks are reacting to this,” he explains.  

As such enabling the architecture teams to start in Forma themselves will also help relieve pressure on the sustainability team. “I would like to see all our architects use Forma or a similar tool in the early design phases,” he says. “If we really want to solve the climate issues and improve quality of life, sustainable design should be a given–it’s our responsibility. That’s there’s where tools like Forma can help.” 

Simplifying Sustainable Design with Autodesk Forma 

Curious about the workflow? Then watch Arcadis’ session from Autodesk University 2023. The session was led by Caoimhe Loftus and Simon Irgens, Senior Customer Success Manager from Autodesk Forma. 

In the session, you’ll learn: 

• How to set operational energy targets. 
• How to identify what climate you are designing for. 
• How to use Autodesk Forma to analyze massing studies with a focus on operational energy and solar panel analysis. 
• What design decisions impact your ability to achieve your operational energy targets.