Joining forces: Buro Happold and brightspot

Building on decades of growth and success, Buro Happold and the higher-education consultancy brightspot strategy are joining forces to create an integrated team of experts to help solve the weighty and complex challenges impacting colleges and universities today.

This strategic evolution extends naturally from Buro Happold’s work in strategic planning, economic modeling, and large-scale vision for campuses and cities, including decades of service to the world’s top institutions of higher education. 

Today, colleges and universities face unprecedented challenges. From unsustainable financial models and legacies of inequity to climate emergencies and shifting student demographics, these significant issues require multifaceted, long-term solutions. Many institutions need new services and programs for better student, faculty and staff engagement. Others are retooling campus assets and technology to support how people learn, discover and connect. Outmoded and underperforming campus facilities are seen with new urgency, a concern heightened in part by exigencies of the Covid-19 pandemic.

This expanded purview reflects Buro Happold’s longstanding process of deepening our commitment to our higher education sector. With brightspot joining Buro Happold, we open a new chapter in our journey from engineers and planners to advisers and strategists. 

Neil Squibbs, Chief Executive Officer, Buro Happold

Formalizing our longstanding collaboration, we officially debut an expanded team of experts dedicated to transforming our clients’ offer, how they are organized, and how they operate. Together we’ll take on wide-ranging projects demanding diverse professional specialties, powerful research and analysis, bold vision, and integrated strategy.  

Our vision — what we’re working toward every day — is opening doors for transforming and differentiating the higher education experience. This takes macro-scale planning on the front end as well as on-the-ground execution and, increasingly, operational insights that bridge the two.

Craig Schwitter, Partner, Buro Happold 
Spacious atrium of Tepper School of Business
Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business. Image: Albert Vecerka Esto

The Buro Happold team will work to solve the problems higher education institutions face and improve the experience for students, faculty, researchers, employees and visitors alike. More than ever before, Buro Happold and brightspot remain committed to client focus, creativity, and collaboration — and the essential bridging between institutional vision and implementation.  

Together, our interdisciplinary perspectives and independent advice enable clients to better analyze, plan and operate their spaces, services, staffing and systems — the four S’s, as we call them — as we work to make higher education more engaging and equitable.

Elliot Felix, brightspot strategy’s founder and now Partner and Head of 
Higher Education Consulting at Buro Happold

Craig concludes “Today we welcome our colleagues from brightspot strategy and celebrate a new opportunity to serve our higher education clients. The possibilities are boundless — and we invite you to join us.”

To find out more about brightspot’s service offers, please visit: https://www.brightspotstrategy.com/