Global infrastructure services firm AECOM has won an award for its work to assess the potential economic development impacts of Crossrail 2. The company received the ‘greatest economic impact’ award at the Institute of Economic Development’s (IED’s) 2018 Awards for its innovative approach to capturing growth opportunities, which helped inform the detailed business case for the proposed new rail route.
AECOM has worked on Crossrail 2 since 2015, delivering extensive economic development, planning, masterplanning and urban design services to Transport for London to help demonstrate how the project could unlock housing and employment opportunities. As part of its work, AECOM created a bespoke impact model to assess more than 2,400 development sites along the proposed route, one of the largest ever site-specific assessments of development potential undertaken for a UK project. This extensive piece of research is unprecedented for a project at such an early stage.
The model was designed to capture the effects of transport connectivity and capacity improvements on different property markets, taking into account planning policy conditions and how these could change overtime. AECOM was able to calculate the likely influence of improved rail connectivity on labour, transport and property markets at various geographic locations. These included immediate station areas and 1km walkable distances from stations, as well as wider ‘zones of influence’ attributed to each Crossrail 2 station and areas around connecting stations or town centres that will link to the new route’s stations.
AECOM’s analysis provided evidence for how an additional 200,000 homes and jobs could be triggered across the Crossrail 2 impact areas assuming supportive land use planning policy.
Andy Rumfitt, Director of Economic Development, AECOM, said: “Our innovative model not only demonstrates how Crossrail 2 will drive economic growth in London and across the south east, but also adds to our understanding of how to capture the transformational housing and employment opportunities that large infrastructure schemes can bring.
“Receiving the greatest economic impact award from the IED is great recognition for the multidisciplinary AECOM team of masterplanners, urban designers, property market consultants and economic development specialists that are helping to deliver this scheme.”
The IED Annual Awards recognise projects across four categories, including economic impact, most innovative strategy, best implementation and most sustainable outcome. The greatest economic impact category recognises how economic fortunes have changed as a result of a project with impressive economic outcomes. AECOM was announced the winner at the IED Annual Conference last week.
AECOM’s Ilias Drivylas (left) and Dave Widger received the award
