Places

Summary highlights of our performance in 2024

There have been many bright spots in 2024, despite challenging market dynamics. Highlights include our successes in designing and delivering data centers, meeting the growing demand for semiconductor technologies, and shaping the urban environment across residential and government projects.

Agility and collaboration with our clients

This year, we have continued to evolve to meet the changing needs of our clients. As they have met with market and regulatory challenges, we have been with them every step of the way. Our people continue to be a differentiator for us, with our market-leading talent bringing valuable perspectives and experience to benefit clients. Further integration of our acquired entities has opened the door to exciting new projects, recognizing the breadth of capability and skills that we have within our business.

Of course, this is not only about agility within Places, but also about collaboration across the GBAs. Our partnership with brewing company Heineken is an example of this, won with the help of our colleagues from Resilience and Intelligence. This project will see different parts of the Arcadis business come together to help Heineken reduce energy demand at its production and logistics sites and support the company’s transition to renewable energy. 

Focusing on facilities

The integration of DPS Group since its 2022 acquisition has enabled us to present an even stronger offering to clients through synergistic opportunities in process engineering and advanced manufacturing facilities.

In this space, our capabilities have grown from facilitating construction, to facilitating production. We can help a client to design the physical building – but we can also go a step further by meeting the client’s more complex needs in terms of process engineering, equipment, infrastructure, workflows, use of space, and energy consumption. Our clients in advanced technology, industrial manufacturing, life sciences and logistics require cutting-edge technologies and processes – including state-of-the-art machinery, automation systems, specialized controlled environments and digital technologies – in order to ensure the highest levels of safety, productivity, efficiency, and product quality. The capabilities we now bring in this area enable Arcadis to contribute significantly more value to these clients as a project partner.

In life sciences, our ‘blue chip’ pharmaceutical clients have continued to invest in new advanced facilities. We have also seen demand for support in the design and delivery of new facilities from semiconductor manufacturers, particularly across the US and in Europe. With government-backed incentives such as the US Chips and Science Act, we expect to see future opportunities being realized in this space.

The data center sector has emerged as a strong growth area, as demand for computing power rises globally. As we scale-up our work in this area, we have looked for ways to facilitate sustainable practices within these projects. This has seen our architectural experts create ground-breaking facility designs that could help clients to achieve near net-zero operations, incorporating impressive advances in carbon sequestration and use of alternative fuel sources.

This is an exciting moment for Places. Across our sectors we see many opportunities for us to go further with our clients. There are few companies like ours. We offer a unique blend of capabilities to meet challenges head-on, and are well-placed for future growth.

   Juud Tempelman, GBA President, Places

Market dynamics and opportunities

Inflation and high interest rates have impacted the property sector, affecting spending among our clients around the world. Decision-making and investing has been slow. However, we are well positioned in 2025 to capitalize on opportunities as market growth returns. 

Government stimulus programs

The infrastructure investment programs previously announced by various governments have been slower to get off the ground than hoped. This includes the US Chips and Science Act, intended to revitalize America’s manufacturing industries, and the European Chips Act, intended to encourage semiconductor production in the European Union.

Awaiting this funding, our clients have been reluctant to make quick decisions around when and where they will spend. This has already begun to change as governments operationalize the promised investment.

Building on our existing client work, we also see more opportunities to support national governments in the management of their defense estates, particularly around repurposing former military bases and creating new homes and sustainable communities on surplus land.

Energy security and transition, and gigafactories

In last year’s annual report, we highlighted opportunities for Arcadis in creating new battery manufacturing facilities – known as ‘gigafactories’ – to meet rising demand for battery technologies in support of the energy transition, and we have built a very strong proposition in this area.  

In 2024, Electric Vehicle (EV) demand slowed, but while we have adjusted our short-term expectations, legislative imperatives signal that EV-related opportunities are likely to grow in the longer-term, alongside ongoing investment in technologies to support the energy transition.

Our clients in this space are already benefitting from the agility and collaboration mentioned earlier as we continue to expand our offer to include process engineering and architectural expertise, alongside environmental expertise from our teams in Resilience.