The Northern Territory’s top engineering projects were recognised and celebrated at the 2018 Northern Territory Engineering Excellence Awards, held at Darwin’s Sky City on August 17.
The winners of the local Excellence Awards
Taking out the Energy, Water & Resources category was Power and Water Corporation’s Solar Energy Transformation Program (SETuP).
A joint entry from Clark Energy (Australia) and Territory Generation for the Owen Springs Power Station Expansion Project took out the Infrastructure category.
The Project Management category’s top spot was awarded to the Cox Peninsula Remediation Project by Ventia Utility Services Pty Ltd.
The night’s most prestigious award, the President’s Award, was presented to the team from Hutchinson Builders for their Gateway Shopping Centre project.
Split into two stages, the two-year design and construction project featured a total of nine consultant teams, 32 subcontract companies and over 2,200 people inducted onto the site. Also completed one month ahead of schedule and on-budget, the Industry Capability Network (ICN) tracked local content involvement for the project at 94% which, given the sheer size and complexity of the project, was a massive achievement.
The Awards Night, held biennially by each region of Engineers Australia nation-wide, recognises their State or Territory’s engineers’ outstanding achievements in their various fields and the invaluable contribution and legacy their projects leave on the economy, community and the environment.
Judged by an experienced panel of five local engineers, a project’s success at the AEEA Awards hinges on a number of aspects, including the work’s:
- Actual or potential contribution to the economy
- Impact on the quality of life of the relevant communities
- Significance as a benchmark of Australian engineering, and
- Ability and extent to which it represents world best practice
Factors such as environmental impacts, sustainability and work health and safety aspects are all taken into consideration.
2018 Northern Engineering Excellence Awards Chief Judge, Jaswant Deo, said:
“They’ve (the projects) ticked all the boxes, each of them showing they’ve got diversity for example in terms of gender and cultural aspects.
“The legacy (left by these projects) would be more around the awareness which, as you can appreciate, most of these communities are not fluent in their knowledge about renewables so that is something we hope the next generation can pick up and run with.
“Aside from the different technologies that have been brought to the communities, a number of jobs have also been created as a result.”
Also receiving recognition on the night were two of the Territory’s industry professionals Mark Howard (Territory Generation) and Paul Brandis (Byrne Consulting), who were awarded Professional Engineer of the Year and Young Professional Engineer of the Year respectively.
A highlight of the evening was our MC, Jean Kittson, who entertained and managed all 200+ of the Northern Territory’s engineering community with skill, aplomb and humour.
Pictured: President's Award winners, Hutchinson Builders.
