Cambridge Design Partnership (CDP) is donating a total of £25,000 to five charities in Cambridgeshire, UK and Raleigh, NC, USA, where it has fast-growing R&D centers.

CDP is celebrating its 25-year anniversary, having enjoyed record growth over the last 12 months, but recognizes that this period has been uniquely challenging for surrounding communities. Five local charities, four in Cambridgeshire and one in Raleigh, will receive £5,000 to further their mission. CDP is 100% owned by its employees and the charities were nominated by employee owners.

Chris Houghton, Partner, Head of FMCG said: “Our 25th anniversary is a time to reflect on our purpose and culture. Part of that reflection is to acknowledge the way the pandemic has put pressure on the health and wellbeing of those around us and to work to make a positive impact in our local communities. We’ve chosen a range of charities working tirelessly to improve lives locally and we hope our support helps their vital work.”

The five chosen charities are:

NHS – Cambridge & Peterborough (CPFT) JustGiving, Head to Toe funds community projects focused on physical and mental healthcare.

Cambridge Design Partnership (CDP) has donated a subscription enabling the children at Bourn Primary Academy, a school in Cambridgeshire, UK, to access a range of online books and reading resources. Around 120 children from Key Stage 2 now have access to the Rising Stars online resource, joining Key Stage 1 children and ensuring the whole school enjoys access to this renowned service.

Many schools have experienced a shortage of books during 2020, particularly books that can be sent home, due to the need to quarantine those books for 72 hours once they’re returned. Online reading resources can meet this demand, but need a paid subscription.

Mrs Laura Latham, Headteacher at Bourn Primary Academy, said: “I’d like to say a huge thank you to Cambridge Design Partnership for stepping in to help. We had bought a subscription for our youngest children to access online books, but we weren’t able to pay for access for the older children. I was surprised and delighted when Dr Neil Campbell, a parent of one of our children, offered the support of Cambridge Design Partnership in purchasing the subscription for the older children. We are very grateful for their support at this difficult time during the pandemic. I’d also like to recognise that the school has received other material donations from parents, governors, families and friends of the school.”

Rising Stars is an award-winning range of books, teaching resources and software that supports primary teachers and learners in the UK and across the world. Rising Stars works with expert authors and advisors to produce resources that support all areas of the primary curriculum, from mathematics to English, computing to PE.

At CDP, we are always happy to support our community, particularly during this difficult year. Dr Neil Campbell, who led this initiative, said, “I feel lucky to work at CDP, a company that believes in helping our local community and in investing in the future generation. Ensuring our children have access to reading books at home is vital to their personal development and educational growth. I’m pleased I was able to help with organising CDP’s kind donation to our local school.”

Cambridge Design Partnership (CDP) has been working with ZSL (Zoological Society of London), the charity that also operates London Zoo, on an innovative conservation technology project to prevent wildlife poaching. Frontline conservationists and wildlife law enforcement teams working in the most extreme and remote landscapes could benefit from connected technology that detects emerging threats to wildlife and sends instantaneous alerts. Since the pandemic, animal and forest conservation has become more problematic, making this technology more relevant than ever.

In 2018, CDP was commissioned by the monitoring and technology unit at ZSL to develop the Instant Detect 2.0 system. Instant Detect 2.0 is a wildlife, environment and threat monitoring system designed specifically to meet conservationists’ and wildlife rangers’ demanding needs. The system consists of an innovative camera and sensor network with integrated satellite communications, designed to gather and transmit images and sensor data from the most remote, harsh landscapes in near real time. It aims to reduce poaching of animals such as elephants and rhino by detecting illegal human activity within protected areas and sending threat alerts to wildlife rangers within five minutes.

ZSL required an easily portable, battery operated system that could withstand being frozen, immersed in water, covered in dust and even buried underground. To date, conservationists have trialled the system in ecologically critical areas like the hot and dry landscape of Tsavo, Kenya and the wet, stormy conditions of the Pacific Ocean. Future deployments could include Antarctica, Sumatra and California.

Sam Seccombe of ZSL and Tom Brittain of CDP tell us how the cameras can help save rhinos, elephants and much more.

Tell us what the issue of poaching means to wildlife right now:

Sam: It’s a global crisis. According to Save The Rhino, in the last decade, more than 9,000 African rhinos have been lost to poaching, while the United Nations calculates that 100 African elephants are being slaughtered every day for the illegal ivory trade. When I was trialling the Instant Detect 2.0 system in Kenya’s Tsavo West National Park last year, a landscape with one of the highest populations of rhino in Kenya, after two months of living in the park I had still not seen a rhino. When I mentioned this to an elderly local he told me that when he was a child, the valley was so filled with rhino it was difficult to drive through it, they were like herds of cows.

“In the last decade, more than 9,000 African rhinos have been lost to poaching“

Tom: We have developed a system that can not only monitor wildlife activity but also be configured to specifically detect human activity and alert rangers to the fact that poachers are active. The Instant Detect camera needs to be able to send images and information all over the world, withstand heat, sandstorms, flooding, freeze-thaw cycles and be easy to set up by non-technical rangers or conservationists. The system uses specialist sensors to identify humans, capture photographs and transmit the images back to the rangers’ HQ in near real time and also to anyone else in the world with the correct accreditation. In the case of anti-poaching, these pictures will not only allow the rangers to locate and intercept the poachers but also these can be used as evidence in prosecutions. In order to send information globally from even the remotest of installation sites, the in-field devices, including cameras, communicate with one another over a radio network before transmitting information over a global satellite constellation to a secure server on the Cloud. To develop such a multifaceted and complex system to this stage has required a highly collaborative effort between ZSL and CDP’s in-house experts in usability, design, mechanics, electronics and software.

The project is nearing fruition now and it would be great to think Instant Detect 2.0 will be available to conservationists as early as 2021. With rapidly declining populations of animals directly caused by poaching, such as rhinos, elephants and pangolins, time is of the essence.

We’re absolutely delighted with how the project has turned out and look forward to Instant Detect 2.0 becoming an affordable part of every conservationist’s toolkit in the field.

For further information and media enquiries, please contact: media@cambridge-design.com or call 01223 264428

We all know what to expect from solar panels, don’t we? Flat, square, black… They are certainly functional, but no one could accuse them of being aesthetically pleasing.

Until now, that is.

Cambridge Design Partnership (CDP) is helping UK company Solivus to bring a remarkable new concept for renewable energy to the market.

“Solivus had the idea for a freestanding solar panel with high architectural values,” explains James Baker, partner at CDP. “Its CEO, Jo Parker-Swift, wanted to create a product so attractive that people would be happy to have one in their garden.”

The end result is a beautiful curved solar installation. “Jo had the concept of a 3-dimensional structure that would capture solar energy more effectively in a given footprint than a flat panel can. CDP helped Solivus turn that concept into a reality” says James. “It also looks stunning, helping Solivus open up new markets for solar energy.”

The panels themselves are ground-breaking too, says Conor Devine, mechanical engineer at CDP: “We used flexible organic solar film from pioneering German firm Heliatek. The green credentials for this film are impeccable compared to the usual polysilicon technology used in conventional panels.”

“Ultimately, the new design will help power homes and electric cars and is set to be brought to the market”, explains Ben Crundwell, senior electronics engineer at CDP. “Our brief so far has been to create a prototype for Solivus to show to investors and potential customers. So we built the 3-dimensional solar generator at CDP in-house, as a bespoke one-off. The next step will be to refine it for cost effective, volume manufacture. We have considerable experience in this process and can provide all the development capabilities needed to move smoothly to production,” says Ben.

The Solivus project is just part of CDP’s increasing involvement in the sustainable energy sector. “As a firm, we believe passionately in doing all we can to create better and more efficient renewable energy systems, whilst also providing our clients with a unique value proposition,” says James.

For further information, please get in touch via hello@cambridge-design.co.uk