Its a wrap for this year and what a year it has been. On Thursday9th December Arup held a workshop at the Victorian Space Science Education Centre (VSSEC) with VSSEC and Engineers Australia. We explored and imagined the potential for this facility to become both an educational and industry facility for concurrent design.

Many thanks to Mark Burry from SIAL, Peter Raisbeck from Uni Melb and Agustin Chevez from Geyer who all have interests in the area and with whom we look forward to continuing to work with in 2011. More in the new year, but needless to say the workshop built on the work we did during the year on digital technologies and new forms of procurement.

There will be plenty of posts to come in early 2011 that will explain what follows and more. As I look over the projects Digital Innovation has worked on this year, I don’t think I could have predicted either the breadth or the number. Just a scratching the surface here… we’ve developed iPad apps (as an Apple Enterprise Developer) in Brisbane, we’re in the cloud – the Amazon Cloud – with our GIS+ work in Perth. Interactive Reports really took off and made their way around the region and client feedback has been brilliant. From Sydney there will be posts on what we’ve done with the Makerbot printing as well as how we are using Microsoft’s Kinetic. In Melbourne we’ve been doing some very cool work in Grasshopper and the Melbourne Office Realtime will make its debut early in the New Year. The animation workshop we did with the VCA has spawned nascent film makers around the firm. Thanks also to Hassell for the feedback!

We’ve won some interesting ARC Linkage grants and I think they ought to have their own pages devoted to the work, which brings me to the site.  In 2011 there will be a revamp to include our design work. Digital Innovation has been literally embedded in some groups and Melbourne Buildings called theirs Design and Digital Innovation. Led by John Bahoric, they are regularly meeting, sharing work and including clients. This broadening of the DI project goes hand-in-hand with intentions of the firm and the site’s content and layout will reflect that.

Thanks to those we have worked with during the year. Thanks to the team and all those in Arup who contribute. Digital Innovation sits at the front end of our projects, surfing the wave. It couldn’t happen without the support of the firm’s leadership, the Australian Regional Board and in particular Peter Bowtell, our Australasian Buildings Leader and Chris Graham, our Chief Operating Officer.

I scrawled a note during the last summer break “2010 – data; mobile and visualisation” and now I’m off to scrawl some more. All the best for the New Year.

Andrew