Profiling our people – Will Brouwer, Smart Places Associate

Working on a new road, station or building is a feat in itself, but Will Brouwer can say that he helped to design a whole new Smart City in the Middle East region that’s digitally enabled to be totally human-centric. Now, that’s exciting.

United Kingdom | 13 October 2020

As the Digital Strategy Lead within the Smart Places group, Will helped the client, a regional property developer, embrace digitisation to improve the performance of built assets and enhance the human condition for the City’s future citizens.

According to Will, a good smart city strategy focuses on identifying how digital and data can improve the quality-of-life metrics of a city, such as environmental factors, safety and accessibility of city services, while navigating consequential topics such as data privacy and cyber security. Will believes this is best achieved through a human-centric approach, which prioritises solutions and recommendations based on the specific challenges and context of a place and its citizens.

My work focuses on how digital can help solve the critical challenges of our time, including the net-zero agenda. Yet, digital is not a silver bullet to our net-zero targets, and I love the fact that across WSP, there is a diversity of expertise that comes together to deliver real change through new combinations of talent, best practices and emerging technology.

The Smart City in the Middle East will be true convergence of digital and physical worlds for the benefit of the people who will live there, from families to the elderly to students and young professionals. Through the Smart City Strategy that Will led, citizens of the new community will benefit from seamless access to critical services such as healthcare, education and leisure, forming the basis of a healthy and sustainable city life. By underpinning its development with a future-proofed technology architecture, built on principles of security, privacy and interoperability, Will’s work truly will last the test of time.

For more information on the work Will and the Smart Places team does, visit

https://smart-cities.wsp.com/