Does infrastructure have the power to change society for the better?

If your answer to the above is no, you’re probably in the wrong business. Because fundamentally infrastructure is about addressing society’s big issues. If it weren’t, I wouldn’t have been in this job for over 35 years, and I wouldn’t be as passionate as I am today about the power we have as designers and engineers to transform the world for the better.

It may sound like a pipe dream or like we’re setting ourselves unachievable goals, but I’ve seen the change infrastructure can bring first-hand.

When we started work on the London 2012 Olympic Park, we knew this was more than building an inspirational setting for the Games – it was an opportunity to breathe life into a deprived area of the city, making it a vibrant, beautiful and affordable place to live, work and visit. The work we did not only improved standards of living in the area, but I believe helped to create a platform for equality. It also drove my passion for building local skills and apprenticeships around all major infrastructure projects, something I still hold dear to my heart today.

This experience stirred in me a real social purpose for my, and Atkins’, work. It spurred us on to look into how we could address things like social housing. This desire to provide an answer to the housing crisis, rather than just being a part of the debate, was the seed from which EDAROTH, Atkins’ development arm, was born. EDAROTH (which stands for Everyone Deserves A Roof Over Their Head) provides not just affordable housing, but high-quality homes. And because it also helps local authorities use their own brownfield land to develop these homes, it gives them control of solving the issue of social housing themselves, providing answers to the housing crisis in a local and appropriate way.

This kind of work runs deep in the soul – with infrastructure solutions like EDAROTH, we have a real chance to address big issues like homelessness in a meaningful way, providing homes and not simply accommodation.

And in light of the current pandemic, it’s made me think – where else can we as infrastructure providers enact change?

My mother is 95 and has found living in a Covid-world very difficult. I want to provide infrastructure that is right for her, whether that’s higher quality elderly care homes that provide a better connection to nature and people or making sure parks and other natural spaces are accessible for anyone, no matter what their age. It’s hit hard in the last few months that too often we spend the last precious decades of our lives in the worst conditions, and that just doesn’t feel right.

If there’s something we as designers and engineers can do to address this, shouldn’t it be our top priority? With over 1.6 million people aged 85+ in the UK, if we can help solve social isolation amongst the elderly, we’ll be solving one of the big problems of our future. I truly believe that infrastructure has the power to create, and it has the power to heal – so let’s use the tools we have to make this happen.