The Living Plan
Traditional planning is a periodic exercise. Every five or ten years organizations develop a campus, land use or development plan intended to guide future investments. But today's institutions no longer have the luxury of waiting for the next planning cycle. Capital priorities shift constantly. Technologies evolve. New regulations emerge. Leaders need to make major decisions every month — not every decade.
Long-term planning is still critical. The problem is static plans can't keep pace with dynamic decision-making. Instead, planning can become an ongoing decision-making framework — one that helps organizations test options, evaluate tradeoffs and continually adapt as conditions change.
Instead of static reports, plans can be as adaptable and intelligent as the campuses and cities they guide. They can be dynamic decision-making frameworks that give decision-makers the tools they need to foresee future scenarios, weigh the impacts of decisions via real-time data, and adapt on the go in the midst of changing circumstances.
Here, we look at three strategies that drive dynamic planning frameworks, illustrated through the lens of three clients at the forefront of this shift — Plan for Scenarios, Not Certainties; Make Data Your Ally; and Think Big Picture.
Make Data Your Ally
Think Big Picture
Plan for Scenarios, Not Certainties
Make Data Your Ally
Most organizations already have enormous amounts of data. The challenge isn't collecting more — it's connecting information in ways that improve decisions. How can all this information be best leveraged to guide better capital investments and decision-making?
To make data their ally, organizations take inventory of the data they have, develop strategies to address gaps, and develop tools to leverage that information. By integrating data visualization, geodesign and existing datasets, new insights, patterns and a comprehensive view emerge that drive better decision-making.
One key tool is The Living Plan, an award-winning platform that integrates GIS data into an interactive, browser-based digital model of the planning area. Beyond traditional metrics like square footage, it includes key data such as parking, utilities, tree canopy, surface permeability, daylight, and walkability. With its intuitive design, everyday users can easily iterate and test new scenarios as conditions evolve.
University of Utah
In working with the University of Utah on its Physical Development Plan, we found that the university had already begun building a campus database, but it had gaps.
The most consequential changes are rarely isolated or immediate. Climate pressures, demographic shifts, new mobility patterns, evolving regulations, and changing expectations for public space can reshape not just a campus or district, but an entire city over decades. Planning at this scale requires a broader framework that treats long-term global and systemic changes as central rather than secondary.
This is where dynamic planning becomes especially powerful. By pairing long-term goals with tools that can model large-scale change over longer timelines, cities can test how today’s policies, codes, and investments may perform under tomorrow’s realities.
Think Big Picture
Our work with the City of Bellevue, WA, has developed zoning codes and development guidelines that are enabling the neighborhood of Wilburton to grow into a model of sustainable, equitable mixed-use development.
Wilburton Neighborhood, Bellevue, WA
When it comes to long-term planning, there are few certainties. That’s where scenario planning comes in — an approach that considers multiple futures and plans for corresponding planning responses. And the more scenario planning creatively responds to changing events, the better it can guide capital planning over the long haul.
Scenario planning allows leaders to test ideas before committing resources. Rather than relying on a single forecast, they compare multiple futures, understand tradeoffs and adjust plans as priorities change.
Plan for Scenarios, Not Certainties
Like many health systems, this confidential client needs to make every capital budget dollar more impactful while weighing a wide range of factors — from seismic compliance and infrastructure and to phasing and shifting academic and clinical needs. To accelerate and simplify this process, we worked with the system to create a digital twin of their campus and an AI-driven ScenarioPlanner 360 tool, which provides live cost estimates as planning changes are made.
California Health System
Moving From Plan to Planning:
This shift is enabled by innovative digital platforms and the rapid emergence of AI, but it is more than a set of tools. It’s also a new mindset that is transforming how universities, healthcare systems and cities approach planning—not as a slow, cyclical event, but as an ongoing, data-driven process that allows them to make faster, more impactful decisions with their capital budgets.
The Living Plan incorporates and makes sense of data, including metrics related to buildings and trees.
It enables decision-makers to update and evolve plans, such as the inclusion or removal of buildings.
It also helps decision-makers create planning scenarios, with a digital sandbox that lets anyone design buildings and districts and turn them into formal plans.
We helped the university build out the database — mining data from campus experts, open-source resources, and leveraging AI tools — and integrated this into a data-rich digital twin of the campus.
The result of this effort is a tool that integrates campus digital twins with space, facilities and utilities datasets and a “sandbox” mode for users to test new ideas — giving the university a clear way to visualize, measure and compare planning options and their impacts.
Central to this effort is an interactive web tool which models and visualizes future development scenarios, tracking key environmental indicators like embodied and operational carbon, energy use and total green space.
The tool helps the city visualize how new codes will shape the neighborhood over time, turning abstract zoning rules into tangible changes.
It also creates a flexible framework that can be updated with new data to guide decisions into the future.
Using these tools, the client is now able to quickly see the spatial, programmatic and budgetary impact of various planning scenarios. More than that, they can adjust factors like project scale, phasing and budget and see the overall impact — stringing together capital projects in a logical sequence over a multi-decade timeframe. These types of studies previously could easily take six months to do, but now leadership can weigh options and reach alignment collaboratively and quickly.
Want to see a more in-depth demonstration of the Living Plan tool?
Reach out to us.
The Idea in Action
The Idea in Action
The Idea in Action
Go From
Static
Dynamic
Building Data
Scenarios
Expansion
Metrics
A Dynamic Decision-Making Framework for a Fast-Changing World
Or are you interested in learning more about how the Living Plan applies to your organization?
The future of planning isn't producing a better plan. It's giving organizations a way to stay agile and make better decisions. By combining scenario planning, big data and dynamic digital tools, institutions can move beyond static plans toward integrated planning systems that evolve alongside their campuses and cities.
Datasets
Leveraging Computational Tools
Data at your fingertips
Mine, analyze, visualize data
Automate repetitive tasks
Model multiple scenarios
Generate key metrics in real-time
Informed decision-making
Campus Digital Twin
Space Dataset
Facilities Dataset
Utilities Dataset
Tool demonstration uses synthetic data for illustrative purposes.
