Arcadis announced a global partnership with Irys, a Techstars start-up based in Texas, USA. The new partnership will see Arcadis incorporate Irys’ cutting edge and human centric engagement tools within its own infrastructure, mobility and buildings projects with the aim to increase community involvement, collaboration and improve decision making. The start-up, previously known as CityFlag, joined the first wave of ‘Arcadis City of 2030 accelerator, powered by Techstars’ in 2019. Over the last two years, the Irys team have worked closely with Arcadis business mentors to develop strategies to swiftly grow their business into the infrastructure and resilience sectors, fine tune products, build relevant networks, and explore scalable opportunities for collaboration within Arcadis and with its clients. One such product, which the two businesses have developed together, is a new easy-to-use community engagement app that enables project owners to engage in a two-way communication with the community on any infrastructure project-related planning, policy or design issue. The app provides citizens or stakeholders with a quick and convenient way to provide input and helps drive community inclusion. Through the app, users can provide project related feedback, complete surveys, receive event notifications and access various project resources. Arcadis will be deploying the app to a number of major infrastructure, buildings and resilience projects in the UK and USA in 2021 with the aim to roll out the app globally in 2022.