Sarah Falconer has over 25 years of experience in the environment field, specializing in Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) and consenting for large complex infrastructure projects. Sarah is passionate about net zero and working with our clients to help them achieve their decarbonization goals. Sarah is responsible for growth within the Energy sector across our Environment and Sustainability range of services. She leads complex energy consenting/EIA projects and develops long term client relationships.

What inspired you to join the industry?

Upon graduating, I embarked on a career in environmental consulting, where I quickly encountered a diverse array of projects and gained a wealth of experiences that the field has to offer. It was this diversity, along with working in partnership with our clients to help them to solve challenging problems, that I found so motivating, and still do. It is a pleasure to help clients to navigate their way through complex and evolving planning processes as well as finding innovative solutions to environmental impacts that result from new infrastructure projects. No two projects are ever the same, and there has never been a more exciting time to work in energy. The urgency and scale of the energy transition make this moment truly transformative.

What is your favorite ArchTam project that you’ve worked on and why?

I recently led two consenting projects for new hydrogen power development projects. It’s been exciting to see new technologies moving into mainstream developments. Any novel technologies always pose new and challenging consenting risks that need to be considered fully to give regulators and stakeholders comfort and buy in to the projects and this was no exception on these projects. As Project Director, I took ultimate responsibility for delivering to client satisfaction and ensuring that as a project team we met all regulatory requirements. It has been really satisfying to see both projects successfully progress through the consenting process and to receive positive client feedback on our collaborative working.

Tell us a story of how your work positively impacted the community.

Engaging with the local community is a critical aspect of any proposed new development. One of the rewarding parts of my role is working with ArchTam and clients to identify opportunities for creating value for communities within new proposed developments. This could include bringing local small and medium enterprises onto the project team, using our ArchTam volunteering days to support local initiatives, and supporting STEM training through local schools and bringing apprenticeships into the team. For example, we have recently been commissioned to deliver three large onshore wind farms for a renewable energy developer and as part of our submission we were proud to establish ten social value commitments which we will implement as the projects progress. These include the use of local supply chain, engagement with schools, colleges and universities, provision of support to local community energy groups and prioritizing local delivery.

Share a piece of career advice.

Be open and try to take every opportunity offered to you, even if it doesn’t seem like the obvious career step. We all learn from new experiences giving us the confidence to develop individual skills and careers further. Often, it is the unexpected opportunities that lead to the greatest rewards.

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In Richard’s 21-year-career as an environmental engineer, he’s managed programs and projects that include contaminated site investigation and remediation, hydrogeological assessments, and water resource management.

What have been the most rewarding projects you’ve worked on in your career?

Unsurprisingly, Defence projects come to mind. A couple of projects I worked on presented new types of environmental challenges that needed strong teamwork across discipline areas to solve. We also needed to be flexible to changing scope, context, and stakeholder needs, and evolve as we uncovered technical knowledge on these new challenges with no precedent. There were also immersive and extensive stints in the field.

In your role leading our contaminated land services teams for our Defence clients, what key skills and strategies do you often use?

While all project management fundamentals are important, change and people are especially important for contamination projects. I seek to understand the client and project drivers and the scope and then match the right team for what is required. Everyone has different strengths and ways of working, so understanding these and figuring out ways to align them with project needs supports delivery. You can plan and make decisions based on the information available to you, but nothing is certain, and planning for change and managing it effectively is critical for success.

How do you build and maintain strong relationships with clients when you’re working on complex projects like contaminated land remediation?

A good kick-off meeting and establishing regular and open communications (both verbal and written so everybody remembers what we spoke about previously). Building a good relationship makes it a lot easier to manage and tackle changes when they happen and means everyone can share in success. It’s also important to understand the unique requirements and systems of our clients so we can deliver. This doesn’t happen straight away but through learning from feedback and applying these to other tasks and projects.

How does your work in contaminated land management contribute to positive environmental outcomes? Can you share some examples of projects where significant environmental improvements were achieved?

When you design a remediation project with sustainability principles, and these are met, there are clear social and environmental benefits. Land investigation and risk assessments can solve uncertainties about a site and surrounding environment so that it can be released for beneficial uses.

In what ways do you engage with local communities during environmental projects? How do you ensure that their concerns and needs are addressed throughout the project lifecycle?

It depends on the project. Where there is engagement with a local community, it’s important to actually listen to them, and understand what’s important to them and what information they need. From there, stakeholder engagement specialists, supported by technical people, can clearly communicate project objectives, findings and next steps in a way that meets the community’s needs,

Richard’s leadership has been instrumental in our 20+ years of delivering robust and consistent environmental services to the Australian Defence sector.

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Melbourne really does have it all — including, as we saw last month, earthquakes.

The COVID-19 pandemic may continue to dominate headlines, but natural events like last month’s 5.9 magnitude quake that shook the city have been no less frequent, and no less devastating, over the past year.

Additionally, we’ve seen wildfires decimate communities in California and Spain’s Andalusia region. We’ve watched summer flooding destroy parts of Germany, Austria and Belgium, and submerge subway systems in New York and in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou. And in Haiti, mammoth quakes have once again caused widespread devastation.

Collectively, these events reinforce the growing need to think of resilience in much broader terms; they are both a timely wake-up call to ensure our existing and new buildings have appropriate levels of resilience, and an opportunity to demonstrate the commercial benefits of doing so.

The principles of resilience encourage an integrated consideration of climate scenarios, sustainability and design excellence, and provide insights into how to manage through emergency situations in a way that can enhance economic, environmental and social outcomes.

Resilient design requires a different approach based around four questions:

1. What critical flows is this asset dependent on? (e.g., water, power, information, workforce)
2. What hazards endanger those flows and assets? (e.g., natural, cyber or manmade)
3. What plans and countermeasures are in place to reduce the risks and mitigate the impacts of those hazards?
4. What steps can be taken to increase the asset’s ability to recover faster and be more resilient?

In Australia, we’ve recently applied the above four questions to the operations and design strategies of a commercial tower and university campus.

Our review identified a range of exposure findings related to water security, critical infrastructure failure, direct attack (physical or cyber), geological hazards, economic crisis and regional conflict. The stresses were identified and the range of interdependent assets and services during a shock event relating to digital, energy, social, transport and water infrastructure were considered as we mitigated risks through our design approach and operational responses.  

For landlords or developers, resilient buildings attract sales and tenants, enhance property values and dramatically improve an asset’s ability to be adapted or modified to accommodate changing needs.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a prominent case-in-point: we now have a heightened awareness of the importance of biosecurity in buildings and have accelerated the integration of resilient design approaches. Health facilities are now being designed to better respond to isolation and social distancing requirements, while encouraging greater use of natural ventilation and outdoor spaces.

Owners of other asset types can leverage lessons learned in the context of the pandemic, as well as others relating to seismic safety (where in California venues like the LA Clippers’ Intuit Dome and the Inland Empire Emergency Operations Centre are designed to meet, and even exceed, respective code requirements). The result? More resilient assets that can remain operational and minimize risk to occupants in the event of future disease outbreaks or natural events.

From the pandemic to last month’s earthquake in Melbourne, recent events have only reinforced the importance of building with resilience in mind. It’s an approach that requires planning, multidisciplinary expertise, integrated design, and a long-term view that, if embraced, will ensure our global cities, including ‘Marvellous Melbourne’, continue to grow and thrive, regardless of what might shake them.

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While the transit industry continues to hope for clarity, there are avenues that agencies can pursue to help shore up transit’s future, many stemming from tools that can gather and deliver information. On the passenger side, tools such as rider information applications can help revive rider confidence. For agencies, forecasting and scenario planning can enable informed decisions concerning funding, budget allocations and resources. These efforts together will help keep transit rolling by supporting healthy cities and thriving state economies.

Here are three ways that these tools can help cities maintain the health of their transit networks.

Instilling rider confidence

The future of transit is intrinsically linked to its ridership — which has dropped dramatically as a result of the pandemic. COVID-19 has taken a toll on riders’ confidence in transit safety, with many believing there is a connection between transit use and contracting the virus, despite reports refuting these links. A recent report from the American Public Transportation Association indicated there is no direct correlation between the use of public transit and contracting the coronavirus. The New York Times supports this statement, specifically highlighting conditions in New York City, stating that New Yorkers tend to practice social distancing as they travel on subways and buses while also wearing masks and avoiding talking, eating or drinking.

Regaining rider confidence is essential to the health of our transit systems. Transit agencies can help riders feel more comfortable by prioritizing system cleaning and disinfecting. This, along with providing clear passenger information can enable riders to safely schedule their trips and address their concerns. ArchTam provided cleaning and disinfection protocol guidance to Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) to help protect against COVID-19.

While emphasizing the importance of wearing masks and practicing social distancing, transit agencies are also implementing technologies like automated passenger counting, touchless fare payment systems and integrated intelligent solutions to safeguard riders and workers. For passengers, ArchTam’s Transportation Resilient Integrated Passenger Solution (TRIPS) provides an integrated approach to safety by enabling riders to plan their rides for when there are fewer people using the system.

Offering options and information

Tools such as scenario planning — looking at potential occurrences and delivering insight related to different mobility conditions and budget allocations — are increasingly important. Scenario planning and forecasting tools such as ArchTam’s Mobilitics^TM provides agency executives with varied alternatives and up-to-date information giving them if/then scenarios to plan for appropriate mid-, short- and long-term budgetary allocations that can help maintain transit health beyond the short term. Investment is important to the next wave of transit advances — including electrification. Scenario planning can highlight risks and tradeoffs and help to balance immediate concerns with long-term goals.

Options and information are especially important as we continue to manage transit systems in the age of COVID-19, which to date is impacting how many passengers use transit and how. New Jersey Transit is employing ArchTam’s Mobilitics^TM scenario planning tool as well as near real-time anonymized cell phone data to understand behavioral changes, shifts in travel patterns and technology advancements. Together with data analysis, this informs current and future service enabling adjustments around technology and pandemic-related factors and allows for informed budgetary decisions.

Managing resources

Effective transit management can be challenging in the best of times and is even more so during a global pandemic. Agency executive officers, currently focusing available resources on their short-term survival options, may be left with little in reserve for mid- and long-range recovery. It is vital that they move past this thinking as quickly as is feasible and aggressively pivot to comprehensive planning and development of mid- and long-term funding solutions, which I discussed in my previous blog, “Transit Funding in the Age of COVID-19: IT’s Time to Think Beyond the Stimulus.”

In the meantime, scenario planning can help transit agencies develop appropriate resource and budget allocations by providing them with information needed to make the decisions that will put their systems on firmer footing now and in the future. Even in a more typical, everyday scenario, funding and investing in transit electrification has great bearing in equity, climate change and resilience.

These efforts, which are now even more important to the future of transit, require that agencies pursue a paradigm shift toward innovation for new revenue streams including the advancement of vehicle electrification as an essential support. Agencies are investing in electric buses as a means of cutting greenhouse gas emissions as well as the development of new jobs for skilled workers who can advance the infrastructure needed to support this next wave. ArchTam has experts in place to help with the analysis by highlighting risks and tradeoffs to help balance immediate needs and long-term goals.

As the pandemic continues, ridership will continue to fluctuate, and transit agencies will be hard pressed to determine the appropriate short- and long-term investments and budget allocations for their respective systems. Transparency with riders, combined with adherence to disinfectant protocols and the use of scenario planning tools, can help ensure that they maintain the resources that support ridership in the present as well as in the years to come.

The post Transit Forecasting, Scenario Planning and Budgeting in the Age of COVID-19 appeared first on Blog.

One potential consideration is an increased focus on the transition to transit electrification. Advancing electrification can play a key role in developing new funding options while also improving transit system efficiency, bringing significant operational savings and environmental benefits to our communities.

Building the case for thriving transit systems

Healthy public transportation networks move people across urban areas and provide so much more than just transportation. Transit systems are intrinsically related to economic development, social equity and sustainability — all of which are vital to maintaining prosperous urban environments and communities. According to the American Public Transportation Association, there is a $4 return on investment for every $1 invested in transit, every $1 billion invested creates 50,000 jobs and a $10 million investment in public transit generates about $32 million in increased business sales and residential property values for homes located near public transit. According to a University of Massachusetts Amherst study, each $1 million invested in transit bus electrification will create 14 new jobs. In short, the hidden economic value of public transit could be up to $1.8 billion per city. Public transit, even in its traditional internal combustion form, produces less air pollution per passenger mile than a single driver car. Electrified vehicles can further reduce that rate.

Here are three ways to advance transit funding during the COVID-19 pandemic and why transit — particularly electrified transit — matters.

1. Build in equity, resiliency and sustainability
Incorporating elements that provide equity, sustainability and resiliency into your transit project can improve funding potential and broaden grant eligibility. These elements are key for new transit projects as their initial incorporation will eliminate retrofitting costs, reducing overall project expenditures. Developing projects with these elements also holds a financial incentive as they involve relatively new industries, such as grid adaptation, that will create jobs — a vital factor in this time of major city and state unemployment. Elements incorporating sustainability and resiliency can protect transit from the stresses of extreme weather and climate change while providing equity in the form of continued mobility access.

2. Play the long game, amp up electrification
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, many transit agencies across the U.S. had begun moving toward transit electrification, specifically by transitioning to electric buses. Despite the pandemic, these commitments remain unchanged. It’s estimated that by 2030 more than 25 percent of the United States’ bus fleets could be electric. Transit electrification may offer the potential for additional funding options while benefitting the communities that these systems serve. With day-to-day funding at issue, it may seem unrealistic to ask transit agencies to invest in electrification but investing in electrification creates jobs, advancing city and state economies and in the long term can generate significant savings for bus fueling and maintenance, helping with future transit financing. Electrification also helps with issues of social equity and sustainability by reducing greenhouse gas emissions related to climate change and public health, particularly in low-income neighborhoods where personal vehicles may be slower to convert but may house fleet routes or bus maintenance facilities. ArchTam’s expertise in cities, transportation, energy, sustainability and resiliency can increase the possibility of project funding and community improvement. We have worked with transportation agencies like the Fresno County Rural Transit Authority in California to model and forecast the future of electrification, identifying opportunities where policies that focus on bringing equitable change to underserved communities can be established.

3. Take a fresh look at legislation
With current means of funding transit proving unequal to the task, it’s time to change the measures that fund transit. Public-private partnerships are just one means of providing funding support. These kinds of partnerships could in the future enable technology and infrastructure companies to own and operate charging infrastructure for transit agencies, a model that has already been tested with charging infrastructure for private vehicles. These arrangements could also promote electrification by providing tax credits to the private sector whenever they make infrastructure investment improvements that advance electrification. ArchTam has the technical expertise to provide recommendation on policy, incentive and even utility tariff changes that can support and accelerate bus fleet electrification.

There are no easy solutions to the issues of transit funding in the age of COVID-19, but with historic, drastic issues cutting across capital and operations funding, doing nothing is not an option. Researching and making informed and well-thought-out decisions will protect transit and the communities that it serves while advancing city and state economies in a time of uncertainty and unemployment. Now is the time to act.

The post Transit Funding in the Age of COVID-19: It’s Time to Think Beyond Stimulus appeared first on Blog.

As the coronavirus pandemic challenges our traditional concepts of space, Underground Cities is a timely invitation to look at how this largely untapped resource can open up vast amounts of space both below and above ground for people to use and enjoy in innovative ways.

The book is structured around five key themes:

• A New Frontier considers visionary blank-slate planning geared toward legacy-building and livability.
• People-Centered Spaces shares research and examples on making the Earth’s subsurface viable and appealing for human habitation.
• Moving People, Transporting Goods examines new infrastructure systems that have the potential to redefine mobility and, in turn, cities.
• New Techniques of Representation looks at the digital innovations that are expanding the boundaries of what we can successfully plan, design and deliver.
• Looking Forward provides case studies of three densely-populated cities — Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo — and explores how they are integrating the subsurface in new and unique ways.

Underground Cities features contributions from ArchTam experts on topics ranging from architecture to geotechnical engineering and social science.

• “With advances in technology and the invention of new materials and tools, what is feasible enters a new dimension. It is time to redefine the underground.” Sean Chiao, President, Asia Pacific
• “Cities are vital living organisms that need to adapt to survive. To be able to respond to today’s rapidly changing conditions, they must start putting people – and all their manifest needs – at the heart of their underground infrastructure.” Will Symons, Asia Pacific Resilience and Sustainability Practice Leader
• “The vitality of natural light can now be captured, in part at least, by artificial lighting systems that change color to replicate the visible cycles and qualities found in the natural environment.” Lee Barker-Field, Director, Specialist Lighting, Europe, Middle East & Africa
• “ArchTam, in collaboration with the Civil Engineering and Development Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has explored ways of integrating the latest Virtual Reality and photogrammetry technologies with more widely used techniques such as Building Information Modeling and 3D spatial data.” Thomson Lai, Greater China Digital Transformation & Innovation Team Leader
• “Far from being in the realm of science fiction, these ideas are based on the sensible science of civil engineering. We have barely scratched the surface (so to speak) of the world beneath our feet.” John Endicott, Asia Pacific Geotechnical, ArchTam Fellow

Learn more about Underground Cities here.

The book is now available for purchase on the Lund Humphries U.K. site and for pre-order on their U.S. site.

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How is ArchTam weathering the coronavirus pandemic?

Steve: It hasn’t been without challenges, but I’m proud of how we’ve come together to support our people, our clients and our communities. The need to collaborate across the globe fueled our digital transformation several years ago, allowing us to quickly pivot to remote working as the pandemic spread, with up to 90 percent of our workforce becoming virtual. The feedback from our clients has been exceptional. We also have an amazing team of disaster response specialists in the U.S. who were able to rapidly mobilize in support of the pandemic response, helping our clients expand hospital capacity by thousands of beds in alternate medical care facilities. We also have a strong digital and innovation team that is helping our clients engage with the public virtually during this time. Like everyone, we still don’t know how the long-term economic impacts will play out, but we’ve kept a great team together, built a strong foundation and are actively engaged in helping companies and states plan a safe return-to-service and a better normal.

What role has innovation played in your pandemic response?

Steve: It’s been critical. From the earliest days of the pandemic, I’ve been receiving messages saying, “what if we do this?”; “have we considered this approach?” and so on. I’ve always known we have some of the brightest minds in the industry, but to see what’s possible when we are all united by a common purpose — in this case, a crisis — has been incredible.

Orla: Yes, exactly. And it’s not just new ideas either. We’ve invented brand-new apps and service offerings, of course, but we’ve also repurposed existing digital solutions in new and exciting ways that we didn’t anticipate prior to this crisis. The urgency of the pandemic helped expedite early-stage innovations like our virtual consultation tool and it unlocked the potential of earlier innovations to new use cases like our Mobilitics^TM scenario planning platform. Witnessing a company as large as ArchTam innovate at the speed of a startup has been an incredible experience.

Can you give an example of an ArchTam innovation driven by the pandemic?

Orla: I come from a transportation background so I may be biased, but one of my favorites is the reimagining of our Mobilitics^TM platform. A few years ago, a team of traffic planners and engineers won ArchTam’s Global Challenge innovation contest with an idea to use census data to model travel demand scenarios and inform the decision-making process of transportation agencies around questions such as:

• How will electric vehicles change traffic patterns?
• Will autonomous vehicles change our needs for parking space?

With seed money from the challenge, Mobilitics^TM was born. When the coronavirus crisis began, the team quickly realized the potential of combining the tool with big data to help address issues such as which people can come back to work and from what neighborhoods, and which areas will have the most traffic given stages of reopening. We partnered with big data providers to introduce geospatial dimensions to the data set and rewrote the algorithms. The result is a platform that can help transit agencies determine which trains or buses to put into service, at what capacity, frequency and timetable based on parameters shaped by the coronavirus pandemic. It takes the trial-and-error out of a return to service.

Steve: There are so many examples, but one of my favorites that I’m following closely is the ability to detect coronavirus in wastewater. Our water specialists are involved in wastewater testing and plant design for almost all of the major treatment plants in the United States. Through a combination of client relationships, deep experience in the science of wastewater and global studies that have proven the ability to detect the virus in wastewater, our team has developed a strategy to implement nationwide COVID-19 wastewater sampling, testing and analysis. The implications for this innovation are tremendous as states begin to test reopening of businesses. The more data available about this virus that we can get into the hands of scientists and public health officials — the better their ability to make decisions.

Much has been written about the difficulty of harnessing innovation. How did you do it?

Steve: We hired Orla. Well, only partially kidding. We’ve recognized for some time now that the keys to competitiveness are collaboration and innovation. It’s what our clients want and should expect from us. As important, innovation is also the key to retaining great people. No one wants to work in a design factory. The best and brightest want to work for a company that challenges them and rewards out-of-the-box thinking. It is no coincidence for me, that the more we focus on innovation and technical excellence, the more our team members want to stay at ArchTam.

Orla: It takes a holistic approach and support from leadership — and we have that in Steve and all of our senior leaders. It’s also critical that innovation not be relegated to a one-off initiative; it must become part of the fabric of employee experience, which is why the first pillar of innovation we deployed was around people. We’ve tried to do that in a number of ways. The Global Challenge I mentioned earlier is an innovation competition, looking for the next big idea. Each year, winners receive a share of a $1 million prize to further develop their idea. The consistency of this challenge and the “no-kidding-this-has-gone-to-market” part about it has made it incredibly powerful. We also realize that sometimes, an innovation might not be the next big global idea, but it can still have major impact on a local level. To harvest and reward these smaller ideas with a big impact, we’ve launched Mindblazer innovation challenges, which are quicker challenges that reward winners with time to move their ideas forward.

In addition, we’ve set up a group of nearly 200 early career “Innovation Agents” to help drive the culture throughout the organization and an Innovation Council to help steer what can be a big ship with the soul of a speedboat. Telling the story of innovation is also critical. Every year, we celebrate our top 10 innovative projects. We produce Innominutes — 60-second videos about recent innovations — and Innovation Showcases, which are deeper dives with Q&A. Keeping it all together is strong leadership commitment. I believe this foundation has been a critical component to our coronavirus response.

That’s a lot. What’s next?

Steve: I know I don’t just speak for myself when I say we are hoping for a quick end to the pandemic. Realistically though, we know there is a long way to go — in helping clients safely return to operations and developing a measured, phased return to service. We also know that what we are returning to will be different than what we left. But some things will remain the same. I have been particularly impressed with how our clients have continued to focus on key issues like sustainability and social equity throughout the pandemic. How do we take the best of what we’ve seen, engineer resilient solutions to the vulnerabilities that have been exposed and design, build, engineer and plan for a better normal? How do we ensure that we get the best possible returns on much-needed stimulus funding? Those are the questions we are helping clients with today.

Orla: The path ahead isn’t easy, but I’m energized by the promise of a better normal. The coronavirus has forced the world’s biggest pilot of digital work/life. It has created the greatest experiment in CO₂ reduction the world has ever seen, and it has forced widespread behavior changes in record time. The question I’m asking is, how can we design infrastructure that continues these positive gains so that we aren’t just creating a new normal but a better normal?  A better normal must also be a resilient one; our industry has so much to offer in designing systems and structures that can withstand the shocks and stressors of pandemics, weather events and all types of future uncertainties.

We’re crowdsourcing ideas on a better normal from our employees and are convening clients, policy makers and thought leaders in a virtual hackathon to “hack a better normal” with multiple perspectives and creative problem solving. Solving problems is our profession and our passion, and this crisis will undoubtedly be the mother of many more innovations to come.

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