Building stories that move the world.

Smarter tools for better work

When it comes to the world’s infrastructure, every detail matters. From designing future cities to delivering sustainable energy solutions, AECOM’s work shapes the places we live, work and thrive. But for Juli Anderson, director of brand and creative and global head of brand programmes, John Van Der Holst, technical practice lead for multimedia strategy in Canada and Matte Timmins, global head of creative strategy, success depends not just on what the company builds — but how they tell that story.

As a global infrastructure consulting firm with more than 50,000 employees, AECOM’s teams are tasked with producing creative assets that inspire confidence and win business. Whether it’s preparing a proposal for the Brisbane Olympics or creating a visual narrative for a rail client, every project carries high stakes — and the demands can be relentless.

The need for consistent branding across a vast organisation, combined with tight deadlines, was pushing creative teams to their limits. To help address these challenges, Anderson, Timmins and Van Der Holst employed the collaborative branding capabilities of Adobe Express and the unlimited creativity offered in Adobe Firefly. By integrating these tools into their daily tasks, they transformed how AECOM’s teams create, collaborate and deliver results — enabling speed, creativity and quality at every stage.

Streamlining workflows for effortless content creation

AECOM’s creative teams needed a way to meet rising demands without sacrificing quality or brand consistency between countries. As the leader of a team responsible for major bids and campaigns on a global scale, Anderson knew her team was losing valuable time to repetitive, transactional tasks.

By introducing pre-approved social media templates designed by Timmins in Adobe Express, Anderson’s team reduced both production time and the approval process. “We’ve built a whole set of templates in Adobe Express for things like social media posts. Our creative team used to take two hours to produce a social media tile. With Adobe Express, we’ve cut that down to 10 minutes,” says Anderson.

Beyond saving time on production, Anderson’s team established a seamless approval workflow. With Adobe Express, social tiles could be reviewed, updated and approved within the platform, cutting turnaround times from weeks to hours. The new workflow has also strengthened collaboration between marketing, communications and design teams, fostering greater cohesion across countries and time zones.

Global brand consistency across the vast network of AECOM was another important factor to consider. “Adobe Express is changing the way we work — enabling us to deploy cloud-based templates instantly, update them and distribute them globally, ensuring everyone stays aligned and working from a single source,” says Anderson. The process eliminates the need for sending cumbersome files in hopes teams apply them correctly — saving time while ensuring every asset aligns with AECOM global brand standards.

Elevating video production

While Anderson and Timmins optimised campaign workflows, technical practice lead Van Der Holst and his multimedia team tackled the challenge of tight timelines and complex client demands. Their goal was to deliver innovative, visually impactful projects that matched the AECOM creative ambition while meeting accelerated deadlines.

To achieve this, Van Der Holst turned to Adobe Firefly, which generates AI-driven visuals tailored to specific project needs. When working with a rail client to illustrate how freight trains were overtaking passenger rail, the team initially struggled to find the right perspective. “We were hitting a creative wall,” Van Der Holst admitted. “Then Firefly gave us a breakthrough — it took us inside the train, showing the freight overtaking from the passenger’s point of view. It was an idea we hadn’t even considered and it transformed how we told the story.”

By combining Firefly-generated visuals with their expertise, Van Der Holst’s team could create storyboards in days instead of weeks, wowing clients and showcasing the AECOM ability to innovate under pressure.

Building on this momentum, Adobe Express became the next essential tool in Van Der Holst’s workflow. Tasked with creating multimedia assets for client projects, his team began using Adobe Express to quickly bring ideas to life. Starting with pre-set brand templates and leveraging Adobe Stock images, his team could transform ideas into polished outputs with incredible speed.

The team also integrated Frame.io Enterprise to streamline post-production. With time-accurate feedback and seamless content approvals, they significantly accelerated video delivery. “Frame.io has speeded up the review process, allowing us to collaborate more effectively and deliver polished videos faster than ever,” says Van Der Holst. With the help of Adobe Express and Frame.io the team can now take concepts from a client conversation to 80% complete in record time, enabling faster decision-making and client approvals.

Empowering teams and elevating creativity

While time savings were significant, Anderson and Van Der Holst saw that Adobe tools also empowered their teams to work smarter and think bigger. By automating repetitive tasks, junior creatives who once focused on production work were now contributing to strategy and research.

“The time savings we’ve experienced with Adobe Express templates means our junior creatives aren’t stuck on lower-value tasks any more. Instead, they’re working with senior team members on high-level conceptual work and collaborating with key stakeholders,” says Anderson.

At the same time, Adobe Express helps the team deliver its content strategy by encouraging creativity beyond design. “It’s allowing us more opportunity to focus on the importance of messaging — giving our writers the advantage of exploring and perfecting different creative options with the spontaneity of a live design,” says Timmins. “We’re also finding the AI rewrite feature to be particularly adept at refining messaging for engagement on social media.”

For Van Der Holst, the changes extended to multimedia production, where Adobe Podcast simplified one of the team’s most time-consuming tasks — audio editing. Traditionally, correcting something as minor as a mispronounced word meant re-recording entire sections. Now, with Adobe Podcast text-based editing, his team can make quick adjustments without starting from scratch. Combined with access to royalty-free music, the team significantly accelerated their delivery of client-facing videos.

“What used to take weeks can now be done in just a couple of days with the Adobe tools,” Van Der Holst said. “It’s a game changer for us and for our clients, who see us as incredibly agile and responsive.”