Arcadis uses Microsoft Power Platform to drive efficiency and support thousands of sustainable design and engineering solutions

Arcadis is the world’s leading provider of sustainable design, engineering, and consultancy solutions. Operating in over 70 countries, the company employes over 36,000 architects, designers, engineers, and project managers. Together, this team is addressing some of the world’s most pressing challenges, from the impact of climate change to increasing urbanization and digital transformation—all with the ultimate goal of improving quality of life for people around the world.

Arcadis works on more than 40,000 client projects every year—from intelligent rail and highway design to construction of advanced industrial facilities, sustainable buildings, transportation infrastructure, and green spaces. Given this wide range of solutions, Arcadis wanted to drive greater efficiency with customized business process automation tailored to each project and client. 

The problem was cost. “We found that the cost of hiring a development team to automate at the project level would often be higher than the value of the project itself,” says Bram Mommers, Global Technology Officer at Arcadis. And that’s what led to the company’s adoption of Power Platform. “Power Platform has enabled self-service automation at the project level with minimal training—and it’s flexible enough to cover an incredibly wide range of projects at Arcadis,” says Mommers. 

Establishing a Center of Excellence 

The company had access to Power Platform through its Microsoft 365 licenses. Better yet, many employees were already using Power Platform to build solutions—even before the company had started to offer any formal training or support. As Mommers says, “Our team is naturally innovative so I’m not surprised that so many jumped into the platform early on and were building innovative apps and automations entirely on their own.” 

Success with this early development led to a shift away from other low code platforms, including a migration of over 50 automation projects to Power Automate. “We really liked the way Power Platform was evolving and how it continues to rapidly evolve today,” says Mommers. 

Management was excited about the innovation, but they also recognized the need to start establishing security and development guardrails. Training was another priority to encourage more employees to start using the platform. 

Work on a Power Platform Center of Excellence (CoE) quickly followed. “The establishment of our Center of Excellence marked a pivotal moment for Arcadis. It provided fully global support for the platform which drove greater usage and fueled significant growth across the business," says Freek Matheij, Global Citizen Development Director at Arcadis. “From an IT perspective, the journey to establish a Center of Excellence for the Power Platform showcased our commitment to efficient governance and optimization of digital capabilities.”

Supporting citizen and professional developers 

One of the cornerstones of the CoE at Arcadis is an innovative Citizen Development Hub. With an elegantly simple design, the online experience starts with a spot assessment—a series of questions covering the business objective of a proposed solution along with the number of users, data requirements, and system integration requirements. 

Responses are automatically processed through the hub and generate a set of support materials specific to the solution described. This includes everything from technical guidance to design templates to an archive of similar solutions that could be leveraged as a starting point. If a solution is intended for more than 100 users, the application is directed to the CoE team for deeper assessment and support. For smaller apps, a Power Automate flow automatically creates an environment, enabling the maker to get started on development right away. 

The site also provides access to an active Power Platform community of over 3,000 members, including a growing network of Power Platform champions. The CoE team also organizes regular hands-on workshops, practical demonstrations, and success case showcases that highlight the value and potential of Power Platform. “We have implemented a multifaceted approach that focuses on design principles, practical use cases, and subject matter expertise to drive adoption and empower our teams,” says Matheij.

The CoE has been an enormous success at Arcadis and now supports over 2,700 app and flow makers, including both professional and citizen developers. These makers have also created portals using Power Pages as well as over 50 AI-driven agents using Microsoft Copilot Studio. 

Delivering solutions for employees and clients 

Power Platform solutions at Arcadis support a wide range of business needs, from automated extraction of data in SharePoint and Oracle to classification of documents using natural language processing (NLP). Additionally, many of the basic apps developed earlier are now being re-engineered for enterprise scalability. Apps that previously integrated with SharePoint are now running on Dataverse. As Matheij says, “Dataverse provides the enterprise security and scalability we need for larger or more strategic apps and it gives us the tools to handle complex data.”   

One solution in particular that has proven extremely successful is the company’s health and safety application. Built using Power Apps and Power BI, employees have used the app to submit over 60,000 health and safety reports, driving more than 6,000 proactive safety actions. “With Power Platform, we have developed a solution that helps us identify potential risk, improve our procedures, and prevent accidents before they occur,” says Philip Houtermans, Global Health and Safety Director.  

Along with internal applications, Arcadis is also using Power Platform to deliver innovative solutions for its clients. Over 50 apps were developed to streamline management of a major rail construction project. Another solution enables real-time monitoring and resolution of roadside issues like traffic incidents and signal failures. A Power Pages portal was designed to provide businesses with incentives to schedule truck deliveries during off-peak hours, reducing traffic congestion.

Arcadis is also leveraging Power Platform to build next-gen, AI-driven apps. Using Power Apps along with the Azure AI API, the team created a pilot project that streamlines traffic and safety analysis for a public transportation client. Now, a traffic engineer can simply upload incident data and modelling files into the app, click one button, and generate a draft report. The app is expected to significantly reduce the manual processing effort, shifting an engineer’s valuable time from repetitive analysis to designing creative solutions.

“By integrating our subject matter knowledge into Power Platform, we have been able to deliver truly innovative solutions for our clients. That’s contributing to enhanced client experiences and new business opportunities for Arcadis, helping us stay ahead of the curve,” says Prasoon Sinha, Global Director of Digital Solutions. 

Leveraging new Power Platform innovations 

Along with current Power Platform technologies, Arcadis is working with new and emerging innovations on the platform.

One example is the pre-built Autodesk connector. Autodesk Construction Cloud is an important project management tool for Arcadis and the company is planning to use the new connector to optimize use of Autodesk data. With the connector, project updates in Autodesk can be easily sent to users through email, Teams, and mobile applications in Power Apps—and even visualized in Power BI. Additionally, by integrating Autodesk Platform Services (APS) APIs with Power Automate, Arcadis can drive more efficient data connectivity and workflows. 

"Integrating the Autodesk connector with the Power Platform will be a game-changer for our design projects. It ensures that designers and project managers stay aligned with real-time data, leading to smarter decisions and more efficient project delivery," says Josha van Reij, Arcadis ACC product owner. 

Arcadis is also involved in early testing of Plan Designer—an AI-powered experience that can build an end-to-end Power Platform solution in a matter of minutes. “We see how Plan Designer can significantly boost our developer experience and really accelerate the documentation process,” says Matheij.

Additionally, Arcadis is exploring news ways to leverage Microsoft Copilot Studio, including autonomous agents, and related AI tools. “The AI technologies in Power Platform will soon have an even bigger impact on how we make informed data-driven decisions,” says Matheij. To help drive this potential, Arcadis continues to expand its maker community, including plans to triple its premium Power Platform licenses in 2025. As Mommers says, “Our significant investment in Power Platform underscores our strong belief in the platform's ability to drive digital transformation, enhance project outcomes, and support future development initiatives within the organization.”