Golder wins top award from Consulting Engineers of Ontario

Consulting Engineers of Ontario announced the winners of its 2004 awards on June 25 following its annual meeting held at Deerhurst Resort near Huntsville. The ACEC Annual Summit began later that day and was held at the same location in Ontario’s Muskoka cottage country.
The CEO Awards of Excellence are in their second year and are given in three categories according to the size of the firms.
One of the larger firms, Golder Associates, won the top award for the most outstanding project. Named the Willis Chipman Award, it was given to Golder for their work on the conservation and rehabilitation of the Library of Parliament in Ottawa. Dr. Trevor Carter of Golder Associates was one of the team leaders on the project. He says their main design challenge was engineering the rock excavations, “particularly optimizing the development and support sequences so that the work could be achieved.”
In the category for firms with 1 to 15 employees the award went to BTE Services for the MXL Fire Alarm System that they designed and implemented in a 180,000 s.f. plant for John Deere Welland Works. BTE Services served as general contractor for the entire project.
Read Jones Christoffersen Ltd. won the award in the category of firms with 16 to 50 employees. They won for the Bahen Centre for Information at the University of Toronto, a 600,000-s.f. computer science and engineering facility that incorporates an exposed concrete structure as part of its environmental features.
Two awards were given in the category for firms with 51 or more employees. Delcan-Hatch Joint Venture and Dillon Consulting tied for the award.
The Delcan-Hatch Joint Venture won for the Sheppard Subway project, a 6.4 kilometre subway line in North Toronto that includes 3.9 kilometres of bored tunnels, five stations and associated rail systems. The project was managed by the joint venture within budget and on schedule.
Dillon Consulting won an award for the Rennie Street and Brampton Street Landfill Site Erosion Control and Leachate Management project. Dillon designed and implemented the $23-million works, which included a landfill cover, relocating one kilometre of creek, leachate collection and landfill gas control.
The awards were judged by a panel of eminent professional engineers led by Paul Gauvreau, P.Eng., an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto.
CEO also presented the annual Louanne Smrke Essay Award, which is given annually to a CEO undergraduate scholarship recipient for an essay on an engineering-related topic. The award is named after Ms. Smrke who is a former editor of Canadian Consulting Engineer magazine and died at age 40 in 1991. Winner of the Louanne Smrke award this year was Grant Minor of McMaster University who received $2,000. The Ontario Concrete Pipe Association makes a generous contribution to the award. The topic this year was “Why does great engineering depending on great communications.” The CEO Chair’s Award went to Jeffrey Deloyde of the University of Waterloo.
Also given out at the luncheon were the first of the Consulting Engineers of Ontario Water Quality Research Scholarships. CEO has committed $250,000 over the next three years to support university-led research into the protection and treatment of drinking water. Each scholarship is for $20,000 per year for two consecutive academic years. Winners were Robin Bourke at the University of Guelph who is researching a GIS-based decision making support system for water resources management and planning. The second winner is Anni Luck of the University of Toronto to research the Impact of Particles on the Effectiveness of Ultraviolet light to disinfect drinking water.