Eco-sensitive roads structure paper wins author civil engineering 2008 Warren Medal
Brendon Hyde, the author of a engineering paper to help civil engineers understand the ecosensitive
issues affecting the design of road structures, that are required by an environmental report to be "fish or fauna friendly", was given prestigious acknowledgement at the Engineers Australia’s Civil College awards dinner in Melbourne on 23 October.
The excellence of Sydney-based Brendon Hyde’s paper “Civil engineering for passage of fish and fauna” was awarded the 2008 Warren Medal presented annually by the Civil College of Engineers Australia for the best paper in the discipline of civil engineering.
The Warren Medal, established in 1929, perpetuates the memory of Professor WH Warren who was the first President of the Institution of Engineers Australia (now Engineers Australia).
In accepting the award, Brendon suggested that while the work could possibly be considered “an
unusual topic for a Civil Engineering paper”, it was all about designing civil engineering road structures to ameliorate the effects of the habit fragmentation of our native species - caused by
road construction.
“In making design recommendations I applied original engineering reasoning to the recommendations given by the many scientific experts I interviewed for the preparation of the
paper.
“As an engineer wishing to achieve economical construction, I questioned the cost effectiveness
of many of these recommendations,” Hyde said.
With qualifications in engineering and law from Sydney University, Brendon has over 40 years civil engineering experience - designing many bridges as well as some heavy industrial structures.
After early work with DMR NSW and several Sydney consulting firms he has been engaged as a technical adviser by government road, railway and dam authorities and by many consulting
engineering firms both in Australia and 9 overseas countries - from Asia to Africa - where he has
worked on some major international bridge projects.
Brendon’s expertise has been officially recognised before by an Australian and international Lincoln award conferred in 1992 for his design of the Leura railway underbridge.
The awards dinner also included the presentation of the Sir John Holland Civil Engineer of the Year 2008 to Associate Professor Ron Cox of UNSW, and the 2008 Rod McGee Medal to Monash University civil engineering student, Christopher Paxino.
Further Information:
John Bright - 0407 234 490 / jbright@engineersaustralia.org.au / www.engineersaustralia.org.au
Engineers Australia is the common name of the Institution of Engineers, Australia with a membership over 86,000.
