A green hospital, better waste water treatment, restoring drought-devastated lakes and a leader in building regulation reform and humanitarian engineering were recognised at the Australian Engineering Excellence Awards last week.
Also announced at the 2014 convention was the annual President’s Award, given this year to Dr Bronwyn Evans, chief executive of Standards Australia.
Arup’s Dr Robert Care was named Professional Engineer of the Year.
“Dr Care, a fellow of Engineers Australia, led the reform of Australia’s building regulations in the 1990s and has worked on numerous major global railway and infrastructure projects,” chair of the judging panel Ian Pedersen said. “In 2013 Dr Care was made a Member of the Order of Australia for his services to Engineering, Business, Humanitarian Programs and Athletics, partly in recognition for his work on the Board of RedR Australia.”
Two of the Engineering Excellence Award winners had strong environmental sustainability credentials, the Eastern Treatment Plant Tertiary Upgrade Project in Victoria delivered by the Eastern Tertiary Alliance [Melbourne Water, UGL Infrastructure, Black & Veatch, KBR and Lend Lease] and the Gold Coast University Hospital, with Aurecon and Jacobs as the GCUH Engineering Joint Venture sharing the award.
Goulburn-Murray Water’s Hattah Lakes Environmental Infrastructure Project (Victoria) won the Environmental Engineering Excellence Award. One of Australia’s largest environmental works, the project aimed to revive the drought-ravaged Hattah Lakes.
“Reviving the Hattah Lakes was a visionary project to restore better health to the Hattah Lakes system of semi-permanent freshwater lakes within the Murray Darling Basin,” GMW acting general manager of Construction Marc Lon Ho Kee said.
“River regulation and a changing climate reduced the lakes’ natural flooding patterns; rare and threatened species were under pressure to survive, cultural sites were exposed and ancient river red gums were dying.
“The result was one of Australia’s largest environmental works projects, which included the construction of a permanent pump station, four regulators and three environmental levees. The works have created a more natural flooding regime in a permanent and sustainable way, making it possible to top up natural floods by gravity or pumping.”
- For the complete list of other award winners see here.