Paperboard machine, bridges, train stations, environmental projects win 2003 Canadian Consulting Engineering Awards

The winners in the Canadian Consulting Engineering Awards 2003 were announced at a gala celebration held at the historic Fort Garry Hotel in Winnipeg on October 25. Around 200 guests from across Canada were at the event, enjoying entertainment by Juno award-winner Lynn Miles, accompanied by Keith Glass, guitarist with Prairie Oyster.
The annual Canadian Consulting Engineering awards, launched 35 years ago, are the most important national mark of recognition for Canadian consulting engineering firms.
The awards are run jointly by Canadian Consulting Engineer magazine and the Association of Consulting Engineers of Canada/Association des ingnieurs-conseils du Canada.
The winning projects are published in the magazine’s October-November issue, which will be posted on this site, with photographs, in the next few days.
The Association also gave its Beaubien Award for lifetime achievement to Mr. Bill Ainley, P.Eng. founder of the Ainley Group, consulting engineers of Collingwood, Ontario. It also presented a special award recognizing 100 years of achievement by the Canadian Military Engineers.

Award-winners
Eleven projects won awards, chosen from 50 entries. The top technical award – the Schreyer Award – goes to a massive industrial project done in the U.S. by the Montreal office of AMEC E&C Services Limited. The Solvay Paperboard Machine No. 3 project in Syracuse is impressive by its sheer scale and complexity — the $125-million project was finished six months ahead of schedule. However, the real interest is in its multi-faceted environmental benefits. The new boardstock machine plant uses 100% recycled paper as its feedstock. It also has closely integrated systems which enable it to reduce the total effluent from the plant as a whole by 400,000 gallons per day and to cut the plant’s overall energy consumption.

Other award-winners include two beautiful structures from British Columbia engineers: a bridge in Bangkok by Buckland and Taylor Ltd. (last year’s Schreyer winning firm), and a dynamically formed SkyTrain station in Burnaby by Fast and Epp. Another structural achievement is the radical transformation of the landmark Eaton building in downtown Montreal by Pasquin St-Jean & Associates Inc.. Unforgettable too is the repair of the Golden Boy statue in Winnipeg by Dillon Consulting Limited – a unique project that involved the coordination of dozens of specialists and the careful disassembly of a precious cultural icon.

Besides the above, an award went to the Arrow Lakes generating station near Castlegar, B.C. by Klohn-Crippen Consultants and SNC-Lavalin Inc., a project that for many years had looked unfeasible until the consulting engineers found a way of building the generating plant on a rocky outcrop downstream. An award went to EBA Engineeing Consultants Ltd. of Edmonton for the environmental remediation of an Aurora College campus site that had been contaminated for 20 years by leaking oil. Another award went to McCormick Rankin/Ecoplans in appreciation of the environmental studies done as part of the Bayview Extension, a road threading through the sensitive and controversial Oak Ridges Moraine north of Toronto.

Two firms won for their skills in computer software — Golder Associates Ltd. of Calgary won for a program to manage for the vast and complex Sihu basin watershed in China. GENIVAR of Quebec City won an award for their high resolution aerial mapping software that enables transportation experts to survey roads from their desks.

SNC-Lavalin Inc., Canada’s largest publicly traded consulting engineering firm, won an award in the International category for the MOZAL smelter in Mozambique, a huge $1.2-billion project that employed 5,500 local workers and involved building an entirely new settlement, with port facilities, housing, water treatment systems and power generation, in addition to the smelter operations.

Following is the official list of the award-winning projects and their consulting engineers. Unless otherwise indicated, the engineering firm was the prime consultant.

SCHREYER AWARD (top technical award)
Solvay Paperboard PM3 New Corrugated Medium Machine, Syracuse, N.Y.
AMEC E&C Services Limited, Montreal
Category: Industrial.
The third machine at Solvay Paperboard’s plant in Syracuse, New York, shows how smart engineering can both increase production and bring environmental benefits.

AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE
Eaton Building Redevelopment, Montreal/Ramenagement de l’Edifice Eaton Centre-ville, Montreal
Pasquin St-Jean & Associates Inc., Montreal (structural engineers)
Category: Buildings
Inserting a large egg-shaped atrium in the 11-storey Eaton Building in downtown Montreal was only one of many challenges faced by the structural engineers.

Rama 8 Bridge, Bangkok, Thailand
Buckland & Taylor Ltd., North Vancouver (bridge designers and construction engineers)
Category: Transportation
A majestic golden-hued, cable-stayed bridge in central Bangkok is one of the longest asymmetrical cable-stayed bridge in the world at 475 metres. It marries technical ingenuity with architectural details from traditional Thai culture.

Brentwood Town Centre Station, Burnaby, B.C.
Fast + Epp, Vancouver (structural engineers)
Category: Transportation
The sleek, dynamically curved structure on Vancouver’s expanded SkyTrain is a radical departure from conventional train station design.

Bayview Avenue Extension, Richmond Hill, Ont.
McCormick Rankin Corporation (MRC)/Ecoplans, Mississauga, Ont.
Category: Transportation
The design of a road through the Oak Ridges Moraine north of Toronto has generated valuable research in creating wetlands and amphibian crossings.

Aurora College Site Remediation, Fort Smith, NWT
EBA Engineering Consultants Ltd., Edmonton
Category: Environmental
At Thebacha Campus of Aurora College, EBA found a way to clean up a site that had been contaminated by leaking heating fuel — and gave students work training on the job.

Arrow Lakes Generating Station, Columbia River, Castlegar, B.C.
Klohn Crippen Consultants and SNC-Lavalin Inc., Vancouver (conceptual design and project management)
Category: Project Management
Plans to develop a generating station near Castlegar, B.C. were deemed uneconomic and unworkable until two consulting engineering firms proposed building a powerhouse on a bedrock downstream.

Repair and conservation of the “Golden Boy” bronze statue, Manitoba Legislative Building, Winnipeg
Dillon Consulting Limited, Winnipeg
Category: Project Management
Dillon mustered a team of experts and unusual technologies to rehabilitate a beloved five-metre tall statue that has sat on top of the Manitoba Legislative Building since 1919.

XEOS Aerial Imagery/Imagerie Aerienne XEOSmc
GENIVAR, Quebec City
Category: Studies, Software and Special Services
Genivar developed a tool that enables government transportation staff to manage road networks from their desks with the click of a mouse.

Flood Management Optimization for Sihu Basin, China
Award-winning firm: Golder Associates Ltd., Calgary
Category: International
Golder developed a groundbreaking decision support system that helps control flooding and waterlogging in the vast Sihu Basin of Hubei Province, China.

MOZAL Aluminum Smelter, Maputo, Mozambique
SNC-Lavalin Inc., Montreal and Murray & Roberts Engineering Solutions Ltd., S. Africa
Category: International
A $1.2 billion aluminum smelter was built in Mozambique in only 31months and provided construction training for over 5,500 Mozambican labourers.

JURY
The entered projects were judged by a panel of eminent engineers. The chair was Mike Murray, P.Eng., Commissioner of Transportation and Environmental Services with the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, Ontario. Also on the jury was Michael A. Butt, P.Eng., President and Chief Executive Officer of Buttcon in Concord, Ontario and chair of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority; Professor Alan
G. Davenport, P.Eng., founder of the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory at the University of Western Ontario in London and a consultant on several world-famous tall buildings including the Sears Building in Chicago and the CN Tower. Another juror was Bruce Lorimer, Director General at the Real Property Program Branch of Public Works and Government Services Canada. Also on the jury were Rosalind Cairncross, P.Eng., of Toronto, Peter M. DeVita, P.Eng., of Toronto, Lawrence Ferchoff, P.Eng., of Winnipeg, Emery P. LeBlanc, ing. of Montreal, and Sheri Plewes, P.Eng. of Vancouver.

For more details, digital photos, or to arrange interviews with the award-winners, contact:

Bronwen Parsons, Editor, Canadian Consulting Engineer magazine, Toronto. Tel. 416 442-2266, e-mail bparsons@ccemag.com. www.canadianconsultingengineer.com, “Awards.”

Claude Paul Boivin, President, Association of Consulting Engineers of Canada, Ottawa. Tel. 613 236-0569, e-mail cpboivin@acec.ca