As specialists in construction and engineering we really understand the issues in those sectors. Combined with our understanding of educational theory, occupational psychology and organisational management we develop initiatives which are both targeted and effective.

Case Studies

Eight people huddle round a table to plan the shower system that they are going to build

Organisational Skills Strategy

Most of the eye-catching educational imitatives that we create for companies in the construction and engineering sectors are the result of an organisational skills strategy that we develop with clients at the start of our projects.

It is critical to the success of any training initiative that it be commissioned with proper regard to the cultural, organisational and environmental context within which people work. To this end we use Key Success Factor Modelling, a consultancy technique developed in-house to ensure thorough consideration has been given to the factors will ultimately determine the success of a programme of training initiatives.

Based on this initial assessment we draw on our team’s expertise in adult educational psychology and professional development at all grades from apprenticeship to leadership to propose specific initiatives that will meet the organisation’s needs. Typically we will work with subject-matter experts in the organisation to develop a training curriculum, design the specific
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Image showing people doing group work on a laptop

Mace Lifecycle Team Challenge

We were commissioned by Mace to design a deep-immersion role-play exercise that would give their first year graduate intake a view an intense accelerated experience of the entire construction life-cycle of a project.

Think Up are specialists in deep-immersion role-play, one of the main techniques that we use to create experience-led learning. We pay special attention to putting in place the right contextual stimuli – from briefing material to how the training space is configured – to make the activities at hand feel as real as possible. Once the stage is set for the role-play, the art is in the facilitation, tuning tasks and the release of information to maintain a high level of participant engagement.

Participants in the Mace Life-cycle Team Challenge take on the role of a multidisciplinary team of engineers, construction managers and project managers whose job is it to see a project from commission through to construction to
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Featured image of article: RSA Royal Designers for Industry Summer School

RSA Royal Designers for Industry Summer School

Over the last five years, members of the Think Up team have taken a leading role in shaping the RSA Royal Designers for Industry Summer School. At the summer school, 24 young designers and 12 ‘wildcards’ join 12 Royal Designers over four days and three nights to inspire, challenge and provoke designers and those who use design, sharing experiences and searching for insight.Royal Designers have designed, amongst other things, the iPhone, the Harry Potter film sets, the mini-skirt, the Millennium Bridge, the London taxi,and the World Wide Web. Over the years, many of them have attended the school.

For many years, Think Up’s founders Chris Wise and Ed McCann, and Associate Tim O’Brien have played an important role in the design and facilitation of the Summer School. At the event teams formed of experienced and young designers are set a very open-ended brief designed to help them understand their motivations and explore the impact that
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Projects