Wellington's Inner City Bypass Project (ICB) has scooped its ninth award at last night's New Zealand Engineering Excellence Awards event held at Te Papa.
The ICB project, jointly undertaken between NZ Transport Agency, Fulton Hogan, Opus International Consultants and Wellington City Council, was selected as the Roads and Transport category winner of the event, recognising exceptional activities associated with the development or operation of any form of land, sea or air transport.
Representatives of the quartet were on hand last night to receive the award, presented by NZTA’s own Strategy and Performance General Manager Ernst Zollner in a quirky twist of fate.
ICB Project Manager Jonnette Adams says she is delighted with the project’s ninth win proving the calibre of the work undertaken is first class.
“As a team, we always believed that ICB was a great project and an excellent end product, but receiving awards like this confirms it among ourselves and the engineering community,” she says.
“I also want to take this chance to pay tribute to the whole construction team, which is who this and our other awards are for. Without the entire team who constructed the project, and the people that undertook the planning work before we started construction, these awards would not have been possible. Take this as a heartfelt thanks for all your hard work.”
Opus International Consultants’ Keith Atkinson says ICB was a special project in terms of what it delivered and in terms of the working relationships that were developed over the construction period.
“We had a great working environment and really built up a good team atmosphere between us. It’s not always something that you can get in big projects because of their sheer scale, but when you do it’s wonderful. Perhaps that feeling has translated into the tally of awards.”
Fulton Hogan’s Richard Fulton says that although he is no longer living in Wellington he misses the time he spent here and last night was a fantastic opportunity to revisit the capital city and the project.
“Coming back for the NZEE award was really good in terms of physically being able to see what a difference ICB has made for Wellington as well as being able to celebrate another win for the city’s largest road construction project in a decade. It was good to be able to enjoy that win with the team that developed and built it as well.”
Wellington City Council’s Project Manager for Transport Network Development, Stephen Harte, says the award strengthens the value of the project overall and its value to Wellingtonians.
“We can see the benefits the project has provided in terms of roading, infrastructure and the revitalisation of the Te Aro area. It’s a pleasure to walk through here and see our efforts have been well worth it.”
The full list of awards that ICB has won to date are Transit New Zealand ‘Best Major Projects’ Award (2006), Opus ‘Client Service Excellence’ Award (2006), NZ Concrete Society ‘Infrastructure’ Award (2007), NZ Concrete Society ‘Supreme’ Award (2007), SPARC’s ‘Best Cycle Facility’ Award (2007), Greater Wellington Regional Council’s ‘Nikau Environmental Compliance Award’ (2007), Ingenium Excellence Award (2008) for projects over $1M, ACENZ Silver Award of Merit (2008) , IPENZ Engineering Excellence (Roads & Transport) (2008).
