Canadian Consulting Engineering Awards 2001

The Canadian Consulting Engineering Awards are given annually, and are now in their 33rd year. They are given to recognize outstanding work by consulting engineers on completed projects. This year the awards are being presented at a special dinner celebration in Calgary, Alberta on October 27.

We received 47 entries, carrying on the upward trend in numbers (last year there were 44). Geographically, firms in the western provinces continued to be better represented than firms in the east. The regional distribution of entries was as follows: Maritimes 5, Quebec 6, Ontario 12, Manitoba 3, Alberta 9, British Columbia 12.

Technical awards are given to projects that demonstrate a high quality of engineering, having due regard for imagination and innovation. Consideration is given to the application of existing or new techniques, to the social, economic and environmental impacts, to the complexity of the project, and to how well the result met the client’s needs. Categories are: buildings; transportation; water resources and power; environmental remediation; natural resources, mining and industry; studies, software and special services. Business awards are given to projects that reflect engineers’ skills and contributions in diverse areas. Categories are project management; international projects; outreach and in-house initiatives. Awards are given according to individual merit at the discretion of the jury, rather than allocated by category.

Chair’s Comments

As a professional engineer, I viewed the excellent work of my fellow Canadian engineers with great pride and pleasure. Being a member of the jury of the 2001 Canadian Consulting Engineering Awards has provided a stunning reminder of the outstanding contributions that engineers offer society every day.

The jury had the difficult task of choosing from among more than 45 impressive, well presented projects, covering a broad spectrum of engineering applications. Fortunately, the jury was made up of prominent experts from all areas of the profession, who took part in extensive discussions and deliberations to select the award winners that best met the competition criteria. The members of the jury were particularly impressed with the attention that the engineers had paid to the environmental impacts of their projects and the efforts they made to mitigate such impacts. The participants are to be congratulated for taking on this leadership role.

This attention to environmental issues is well demonstrated in this year’s Schreyer Award winner, the Whittier Access tunnel project in Alaska. The project combined both technical and process innovations to overcome a number of operational, financial and environmental challenges. Its merits and those of other projects considered by the jury are described in the pages that follow.

I close by thanking my colleagues on the jury for their hard work, expert opinions and objective discussions, and thanks to ACEC and Canadian Consulting Engineer magazine for giving me the opportunity to chair this jury. It has been a most enriching experience.

Sherif A. Barakat, PH.D., P.Eng.

THE JURY

Dr. Sherif A. Barakat, P.Eng. (Chair) is Director General of the Institute for Research in Construction at the National Research Council of Canada, a position that he took in 1997. Based in Ottawa, he is responsible for the leadership and management of the Institute, which is the national centre for construction technology, employs over 220 skilled staff, and has an annual budget of $22 million. Dr. Barakat earned a degree in mechanical engineering at Alexandria University in Egypt in 1976, and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Manitoba in 1973 and 1977 respectively.

Allan Davies, P.Eng. is President of EPCOR Water Services Inc. of Edmonton, a position he has held since 1999. Prior to joining EPCOR he managed the City of Edmonton’s Water Branch and has 25 years of experience in water works, drainage and water resources, including in the Caribbean and Africa. He has been on the board of directors and executive committee of the American Water Works Association, and is an honorary member of that organization. He is a graduate of the University of Calgary in civil engineering, and of the University of Alberta in transportation engineering.

Marta Ecsedi, P.Eng. is Director of Alumni Relations with the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto. A graduate in civil engineering from the university in 1976, she went on to spend 25 years in senior management positions in telecommunication companies, including Bell Canada, Clearnet and Sprint Canada. She is on several boards, including acting as chair of the Honour and Awards Committee of Professional Engineers of Ontario, and as past chair of the Women in Engineering advisory committee. She received PEO’s Order of Honour in 1994.

Steve Franklin, P.Eng., is Director and Deputy Chief Building Official for the City of Toronto, east district, a position he has held since the amalgamation of the City of Toronto in 1998. He began his 25-year career as a building official with the former city of North York, and he has also worked for the Office of the Ontario Fire Marshall. Mr. Franklin graduated from Ryerson Polytechnic in civil engineering/structural, in 1972.

Robert T.E. Gillespie, P.Eng. is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of General Electric Canada, and President of GE Capital Canada. Within GE he has held a wide range of executive, management and engineering positions. He has also chaired and served on the boards of many community and professional organizations, and currently is Canadian representative to the International Chamber of Commerce. In 1999 he was selected as Canada’s International Executive of the Year by the Canadian Council for International Business, and was also awarded the Gold Medal of the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers. He studied electrical engineering at Heriot-Wat University in Edinburgh, Scotland, and management at Harvard Business School in Boston.

Reinhold Kittler, ing., received his engineering degree in mechanical engineering in Stuttgart, Germany. Since then he has worked for over 40 years in the HVAC and refrigeration industry as an application engineer for manufacturers and contractors. He is the founder of Dectron Inc. based in Montreal and holds several patents on mechanical dehumidifiers. He is a fellow of the American Society of Heating and Refrigerating Engineers (ASHRAE), is active on several of its technical committees, is the author of many symposium papers and has contributed to five ASHRAE handbooks on HVAC applications.

Theodore Stathopoulos, ing. is a Professor and the Director of the Centre for Building Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. A graduate from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, and the University of Western Ontario, he joined the Centre for Building Studies in 1979. He has written more than 250 publications in refereed journals and conference proceedings, specializing in the area of wind engineering and building aerodynamics. In 1997 he received Concordia’s Teaching Excellence Award, and in the same year received the 1997 Engineering Award of the National Hurricane Conference for his studies leading to the adoption of the new ASCE-7 Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures.