The Three Delta Towns Water Supply and Sanitation Project in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, managed by GHD, took out top honours of the Sir William Hudson Award for engineering excellence at the 2009 Australian Engineering Excellence Awards (2009 AEEA) gala dinner at the Great Hall of Parliament House Canberra last night, Wednesday 25 November.

The Engineers Australia Sir William Hudson Award was presented by Peter Godfrey, National President of Engineers Australia and was accepted on behalf of GHD by Dr Martin O’Dell, Water Sector Manager, International Development Assistance.

The project promoted sustainable practices and created healthy environments for more than 280,000 people in the provincial towns of Ha Tien, Sa Dec and Bac Lieu. The $80 million program was funded by the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) and the Vietnamese government. GHD worked closely with local residents to raise awareness of water, sanitation and health linkages and improve sustainable community practices. 

Water treatment plants and infrastructure were constructed to deliver safe drinking water. New drainage systems were constructed and uncontrolled waste dumps are being replaced. The project has improved the welfare of residents, rehabilitated and extended current facilities and services and has developed the capacity of local institutions and community groups. Through the project’s community household infrastructure program, more than 4,400 household septic tanks have been built through ongoing sanitation credit schemes, 30 school sanitation facilities have been constructed and neighbourhood environment conditions have improved.  

Australian Engineering Excellence Awards Winners

Angel Project – Woodside, J P Kenny and KBR Transfield Worley, and WorleyParsons.  

The $1.6 billion Angel project successfully delivered the largest not-normally-manned (NNM) gas project platform in Australia. It is believed to be the most complex, highest production, glycol dehydration NNM facility in the world, with state-of-the-art environmental monitoring. Angel was completed safely, on time and under budget. Positioned 120km offshore of Karratha in about 80m of water, the platform is powered and remotely controlled via a subsea cable from the North Rankin A platform 50 kms away. It is supplied by three large bore subsea production wells, which more than meet the topside’s production capacity of 800 million cubic feet of gas and 50,000 barrels of condensate a day. 

Creating Tugun Bypass – PacificLink Alliance – SMEC Australia Pty Ltd, Qld Department of Main Roads and Abigroup.

The $543 million Tugun Bypass Project involved the full design and construction of a new seven kilometre long dual carriage way bypassing Tugun on the Gold Coast. The bypass provides a high standard road link between the southern Gold Coast and northern NSW. It has met its aim to reduce congestion on the Gold Coast Highway, and has decreased the travel time from Currumbin to Tweed heads to five minutes. It was forecast that without this bypass, delays of up to 30 minutes would have been commonplace by 2017 for travel between the Qld and NSW borders.

One Shelley Street Sydney – ARUP, Brookfield Multiplex and WSP Lincolne Scott

One Shelley Street Sydney at King Street Wharf is a striking combination of form, function and sustainability. The stunning building features a magnificent external diagrid structure and an imposing internal atrium. The 35,000 square metre, 11 storey building consists of one level of retail and ten levels of A-grade commercial office space. The external diagonal steel grid structural system eliminates the need for perimeter columns, maximising internal floor space. A full fire engineered strategy was developed to address issues such as smoke control, fire resistance and egress in all parts of the building. It achieved a 6 Star Green Design rating from the Green Building Council of Australia. 

ubowireless Suite – ubowireless Pty Ltd.

Efficient management of complex wireless broadband networks is a global operational challenge. ubowireless is an intelligent optimisation software suite that monitors, manages and optimises overall wireless broadband performance, improving customer experience while simultaneously improving network profitability. It collects a wide range of unrelated network and business data, correlates, processes and identifies any inefficiencies, and instructs multiple feedback-controlled optimisation engines to improve performance in real time. ubowireless preemptively predicts and rectifies customer connection problems, load balances traffic between radio stations, manages remote test probes, and provides powerful reporting capabilities to help operators better identify opportunities for savings.

World Class Hydro Machine Operation – Hydro Tasmania & ALSTOM.

For ten years, Hydro Tasmania has aimed to minimise hydro machine vibration levels to what is considered world’s best practice. A large number of engineering practices need to be applied, controlled and continually improved over many years to achieve this. During the modernisation of the 62 mega watt Unit 1 Pelton Machine at Poatina Power Station in 2008/2009 (an $18 million project), all of the improvement practices were applied and the outcome has delivered the lowest vibration levels ever achieved by Hydro Tasmania and considered without doubt, world class.  The long term benefit will be to minimise Unit 1 machine wear including metal fatigue thus ensuring safe and trouble free operation over the next 30 years, delivering a conservative life cycle saving of $4 million. Now perfected, the improvement practice will be progressively applied across Hydro Tasmania’s fleet of 52 Hydro machines to deliver major long term savings to Hydro Tasmania and the State of Tasmania.

Australian Government Engineering Innovation Award

Sponsored by AusIndustry

Cochlear™ Hybrid™ System – Cochlear.

Hearing is the only human sense that has been successfully restored to date by the invention of the Cochlear implant, which is an incredible technological feat in the field of biomedical engineering.  The Cochlear™ Hybrid™ System builds on this innovation, seamlessly integrating electrical stimulation (i.e. Cochlear implant) with acoustic hearing (i.e. hearing aid).  The Cochlear™ Hybrid™ System is for individuals with severe to profound high frequency hearing loss, who have useful low frequency hearing. By effectively restoring their hearing loss, Hybrid enables individuals to regain their ability to communicate easily and enhances their appreciation of environmental sounds.

Environmental Engineering Excellence Award

Sponsored by University of Technology Sydney

Blackmans Swamp Creek Stormwater Harvesting Scheme – Orange City Council and Geolyse Pty Ltd.

The Blackmans Swamp Creek Stormwater Harvesting Scheme signals a revolution in the way urban stormwater runoff is viewed and utilized by water authorities and the general public. The project is the first large scale stormwater harvesting scheme in Australia which intentionally harvests stormwater for drinking water supplies. It is an innovative solution for drinking water which helps underpin the security of Orange’s future water supplies, capable of providing up to 35% of the city’s current annual water requirements. The project evolved from problem identification to operational reality within 18 months whilst meeting the necessary legislative, environmental and community consultation requirements, on time and within budget. The first harvested stormwater has been transferred to the primary water supply reservoir and is an important milestone in the development of an integrated system designed to secure Orange’s future water supply.

Engineering Team Awards

The excellence of members of Australia’s engineering team were also celebrated at the dinner with awards for:

2009 Professional Engineer of the Year to Simon Bartlett of Brisbane;

2009 Young Professional Engineer of the Year to Adrian Clark of Sydney;

2009 Engineering Officer of the Year to Captain Keith Chambers of Townsville; and

2009 Engineering Technologist of the Year to Tom Maher of Darwin.

The 2009 Engineers Australia’s President’s Prize was awarded by Peter Godfrey to Barry Grear AO of Adelaide in recognition of his outstanding services to the profession including his recent 2-year Presidency of the World Federation of Engineering Organisations.      

Further information and photos about the all the projects and individual awardees are available at www.excellenceawards.org.au .

Media Contact: John Bright – 0407 234 490 / jbright@engineersaustralia.org.au              

Engineers Australia is the common name of the Institution of Engineers Australia with a membership of almost 90,000