How Arup's Team Saved £100,000 with a CMS Transformation

Arup is the engineering consultancy behind the Sydney Opera House, Crossrail, and the Pompidou Center. It is their engineering that shapes much of our world — designs and solutions built with the future in mind.

But, their digital experience had fallen behind. It wasn’t reflective of their work. Steve Burleigh, Head of Web, knew for a long time that the digital platform needed to evolve alongside the business. The firm had adopted a new brand position, but had lost its identity in the digital world.

“The [old website] design didn’t come up to the ideas of where we were thinking,” Steve recalls. “It was reflective of the business in an older place.” After seven years without major updates, the website had become slow and expensive to maintain, creating challenges for a firm committed to innovation.

Dr. Erin Gill, Director of Global Marketing, recognized the strategic imperative. "We are a company that looks to the future. We want to see what's coming, and we want to be part of it. But our website wasn't about the future — it was about the past."

Arup chose to partner with UNRVLD to lead their digital transformation. They agreed upon three critical business objectives that would define success:

Brand positioning to match their engineering excellence

Lead generation through better data capture

Talent attraction to inspire the next generation of engineers

The accessibility standards presented another opportunity for improvement. "We weren't keeping track of industry standards," Steve notes.

Erin's vision required comprehensive modernization. "We wanted to be able to explain our services, reach our markets, and talk about our work in a way that was modern, clean, and dynamic."

The evaluation process led them to Optimizely CMS, chosen over legacy solutions like WordPress, for its ability to handle complex global requirements while providing enterprise-grade content management.

Optimizely offered a structured content framework with reusable components to ensure consistency across Arup’s vast content library. Its enhanced accessibility capabilities aligned with industry standards essential to Arup’s market position, while integration with tools like Marketo enabled efficient marketing automation. The platform’s scalable architecture empowered content creation across 94 global offices, giving Arup the flexibility and control they needed to support their global ambitions.

"We needed to update our technology, visual identity of the site, and the way that content was created and governed,” Steve explains. Optimizely’s extensive plugin library also promised future expansion without technological constraints.

Arup treated this project like they were building another landmark that would stand the test of time. Not only were they modernizing their website to make up for seven years of digital neglect, but ensuring the online experience they provide never falls behind again.

They knew there would be savings pre-launch, but it was the response almost immediately after launch that validated this was the correct decision.

50% increase in conversions from market pages to service pages

£100,000+ annual savings by reducing their tech stack and maintenance costs

On-time delivery of a complex global website project

The numbers only tell part of the story.

"The changes we've made to the website have allowed us to start telling our stories better," Steve explains. The structured approach transformed how Arup presented their work.

Steve’s Digital Experience team became storytellers, creating a website with more engaging, visually compelling pages that showcased engineering excellence. Arup’s identity is now front and center for any visitor to see.

There is more editorial control, too, enabling content curation rather than static project lists. And this all leads to improved user journeys through Content Recommendations, guiding visitors through relevant content, while increasing engagement and conversions.

"We're no longer just presenting lists of stuff back to people. We can now start highlighting things, collating things in a way that allows us to be more thematic."

The real measure of transformation came from an unexpected source: the 18,000 members who had spent years avoiding conversations about their corporate website.

"The staff we're starting to train on it have been giving us positive feedback," Steve notes. "Many of those don't want to do this work [change management] — the fact they're giving us positive feedback is really good." The shift represented something more profound than just functional improvements, too.

The platform's influence rippled throughout the organization in ways the team hadn't anticipated. "The work on the design of the site allowed us to challenge the internal business over the direction of our design system," Steve explains. The digital-first approach they developed for the website became the foundation for a comprehensive style guide now used across all marketing channels, creating consistency that reinforced Arup's brand excellence at every touchpoint. Arup's members are now actively sharing and championing their website.

The website now effectively serves multiple audiences — clients, potential clients, government agencies, partners, media, and the public — while maintaining visual standards that reflect Arup's engineering capabilities.

Looking back on the achievement, Steve reflected on the professional satisfaction: "I'm proud that my small team and I delivered a 2,500-page website in that time."

Erin sees the strategic value: "We really worked hard and quite successfully to think about how to reach our audiences in specific markets. Our previous site was quite muddled in that way. And now we have a really clear offer for specific markets."

There had been a business case to upgrade, but what they achieved with UNRVLD and Optimizely was so much more. An identity restored, with a digital experience that is built for the visionaries they seek.

The Optimizely platform isn’t just their website — it’s their invitation to the future they’re helping to build.