Digital

Building on HLM’s past R&D successes, we’re consolidating and investing in the next stage of our dedicated research and development programme, HLM RaD. Our research themes resonate with our own values, our ambitions, and the future we want to be a part of. Across every sector and specialism HLM is known for, we remain at the forefront of design thinking.

We partner with exceptional clients, specialists, academics, research bodies and policy-makers; bringing together the best knowledge to innovate, experiment and explore better ways of working, collaborating, designing and constructing.

Most recently we collaborated on a groundbreaking new initiative, the Regenerative Twin, which demonstrated what can be achieved when we move beyond traditional carbon reduction measures. Our DfMA and industrialised construction team also launched a digital kit of parts on behalf of the Ministry of Housing.

Other significant HLM R&D highlights include; an award-winning circular twin project which could significantly reduce whole life carbon; in a project supported by Innovate UK, we collaborated on a successful MMC demonstrator project to ‘standardise the invisible and customise the visible’; and in a unique collaboration with university researchers, contractors and suppliers, we created a digital DfMA platform design for healthcare.

HLM’s thoughtful design toolkit is a set of innovative digital tools we designed to enable our designers and clients to advance their understanding of what people want and need from their built environment. Gathering and analysing qualitative and quantitative data, we use the toolkit to define, test, develop and evaluate all our projects – from conception to post-occupancy.

This powerful toolkit benefits everyone:

First up is HLM Insight, our stakeholder engagement tool. The data generated from stakeholder surveys informs the project brief, and helps clients with effective change management by identifying what’s really important to their building users – spatially, physically and emotionally.

Next, our design teams use HLM Healthcheck to test their concept design against a range of wellbeing measures and best practice guidance.

And finally, HLM Impact is our POE tool that creates a virtuous social value circle. Post occupancy, we survey stakeholders again to measure the success of our design in operation. Our clients use these results to define their social return on investment.

Our clients also benefit from our innovative estate assessment tool, HLM Place, to develop transformative estates strategies.

Altogether our thoughtful design toolkit feeds our curiosity and helps us improve the lives of the people who use the buildings and spaces we design. And it helps our clients make better-informed decisions about their investments, and how to best serve their communities.