Residential
We all know what it feels like to open the door to our home, so when we create homes and communities, we want to make it a place you want to be.
People’s health, wellbeing and sense of social worth is intrinsically wrapped up in where they live and the community’s they are part of.
The need to address a modern-day ‘housing crisis’ is a frequent message, but our view of the residential sector goes much deeper than that.
Whether it’s city centre build-to-rent apartments, a later living development, or social housing, a home is a home. What truly matters is knowing it’s part of a safe environment, close to the amenities you value, energy efficient, and with access to green space and blue sky.
Our teams engage in proposed developments at the earliest of stages. That’s the point where we can deliver greatest value. Setting the engineering masterplan for a future community. We inform the masterplan by helping you to understand the constraints and identify the opportunities to deliver a truly sustainable, future-proofed, commercially valuable development.
It's that integrated expertise that we bring to our clients that enables us to understand how residential developments, both on mega-brownfield sites and within tight urban environments, come together and deliver value to their surrounding communities.
The outcome is a development with a sense of place, amenities, homes and mobility that connect together and would make all of us proud to say – that’s home.
Who we work with
We work with all stakeholders in the residential sector:
- Strategic land developers
- House builders
- Specialist developers
- Investors
- Local authorities
- Main contractors
- Design teams
It’s a multi-faceted sector, and our experience includes:
- Housing estates
- High-rise developments
- Build-to-rent developments
- PRS developments
- Social and affordable housing schemes
- Later living developments
- Student accommodation
- Mixed-use schemes
- Exclusive high-net worth developments
- Re-purposing of existing and listed buildings
Across the UK, we’ve well-established relationships with local authority planning, environmental health and highways teams which helps in sharing ideas and securing a way forward in the delivery of vital new housing, public realm and supporting amenities.
Where we add value
In addition to our fundamental engineering design principles, we also address areas that include:
Setting the blueprint for a masterplan development, we’ll draw together strategies for energy supply, mobility, health and wellbeing, water, natural capital and waste, and will shape the overarching sustainability goals for a development.
We fully cost the opportunity to invest in renewable energy and collocate where appropriate with energy storage solutions to deliver resilience, generate income and enhance sustainability credentials.
We model the requirements and opportunities for charging infrastructure site-wide, and address the supporting utility requirements.
We unlock development potential and secure planning consents by adopting the core principles of integrated and natural flood management and Sustainable Drainage Systems. We’re also at the forefront of helping planning authorities and developers to implement nutrient neutrality effectively.
Our multi-disciplinary approach means we focus on a range of initiatives to reduce carbon impacts at every stage. Through material re-use on-site; cut and fill techniques; structural optioneering to select the most efficient build that minimises the use of materials, construction vehicle movement and embodied carbon in selected materials; and by simply repurposing buildings – we’re constantly looking at how to reduce carbon impacts.
An approach to acoustics that enhances the public realm and the community through sound, from vibrant public squares to nurturing urban wildlife, through to spaces for mental relaxation.
We’re deploying cutting-edge technology to model and monitor air quality to ensure residential environments meet World Health Authority guidelines.
Our work with investors and owners of housing stock, such as affordable homes and later living facilities, benefit from our strategic approach to fire risk management. We assess risks, ensure compliance and identify and assist with areas for improvement.
We work with a range of stakeholders to model and identify passive design techniques that promote natural ventilation whilst improving the air tightness of buildings to reduce energy wastage. Our structural designs include embodied carbon calculations and advocate the use of more sustainable low-carbon materials.
Access to power is constrained and grid reinforcement works that connect sites to available capacity is frequently complex, competitive and expensive.
We take a strategic approach to help you understand your power needs. We assess sites and available capacity, establish the options to scale up your needs, support you with applications and negotiations with the DNOs and cost up options to invest in onsite generation and storage to reduce peak demand.
We’re shaping the big picture for major residential-led developments, taking care of the detail to ensure people’s local environments are safe, sustainable and welcoming.
