Arup included on Fortunes first Change the World list

New York — Arup has been included as one of 51 companies who “do well by doing good” on Fortune magazine’s inaugural “Change the World” list. Ranked alongside some of the world’s best known corporations, Arup is the only firm included from the Architecture, Engineering & Construction (AEC) industry.

“Shaping a better world is at the core of our ethos, and Arup is pleased to be recognized by Fortune as a firm that has ‘made a sizable impact on major global social or environmental problems,’” said Greg Hodkinson, Arup Group Chairman. “Arup’s independent ownership structure gives conviction a place in our decision-making, alongside the needs of clients and commercial imperatives. The result is clear-sighted, thoughtful decisions about our priorities as a business and as a member of society.”

Fortune has compiled a list of 51 global companies that have affected major social or environmental concerns in a positive way by integrating them into their competitive strategy. The goal of the list is to highlight companies who build goodness into their business strategy and to “shed new light on the power of capitalism to improve the human condition,” according to the magazine’s methodology statement.

To assemble the list, the editors of Fortune and FSG, a nonprofit social-impact consulting firm, reached out to dozens of business, academic, and nonprofit experts around the world, asking for their recommendations. Fortune and a joint team from FSG and the Shared Value Initiative then vetted more than 200 nominees. Companies were considered against four criteria:

• the degree of business innovation involved,
• the measurable impact at scale on an important social challenge,
• the contribution of the shared-value activities to the company’s profitability and competitive advantage, and
• the significance of the shared value effort to the overall business.

The final list of 51 was selected and ranked by the editors of Fortune based on the magazine’s own reporting and by the analysis provided.

Arup influences many people’s lives through its projects. Investing in research, innovating and creating better solutions, and putting sustainability at the heart of its work are of the ways in which Arup exerts a positive influence on the wider world. Notable projects have included collaboration with C40 Cities in developing “Climate Action in Megacities 2.0”, an opportunities and baseline report that shows a clear trend of expanding climate action in cities; the California Academy of Sciences, the largest LEED platinum certified building in the world; and the BIQ house in Hamburg that featured the world’s first bioreactive façade.

Read more about the Fortune magazine list at https://fortune.com/2015/08/20/introducing-change-the-world-list.