A unique and highly complex railway station project in London is the winner of the 2012 ‘Gold’ Award of Excellence. For the judges, led once again by Dr WA Roberston and Jayne Perrin, the Canary Wharf Crossrail Station project entered by Senior Engineering Surveyor, Eric Zeeven, represented “excellence in the provision of surveying services and support for a huge and demanding rail station complex”.
The project involved range of deformation monitoring and surveying disciplines such as hydrographical, topographical and engineering. It also featured construction activities that were in some cases a first in the United Kingdom. The mid dock location was challenging being bounded on three sides and in close proximity to existing buildings ranging from 18th century wooden piled listed buildings, to 52 storey modern high rise towers.
An innovative exercise in practical recreational mapping to support a local community by Canmap Hawley Ltd based in Rotorua was awarded the Silver Award. This innovative mapping project involved a new concept of a high utility recreation map that allowed for regular updates, contributed to sustainable recreational use of the forest, and was both highly collaborative and cost effective. The resulting products of this project were maps and trail profiles provided through a Recreation Guide, trail map sign boards at key positions in the forest, and a concept of a cross between a map and a hanky (Manky) printed on durable fabric.
The Merit award went Benjamin David Dash, Spiire Ltd, Wellington for a dynamic deformation monitoring project in Tonga that demonstrated levels complexity professional and technical challenges and innovation. This work involved a non-contact survey monitoring component of a project required by Transpower NZ Limited. This project sought to gain knowledge about a specific tower type in the network in regard to the risk to the network of these towers.
The NZIS awards are open to all Institute members with the aim of encouraging and identifying excellent performance by the surveying profession. The awards this year were presented at the NZIS annual conference dinner held Invercargill, Saturday 27 October 2012.
Six entries were received detailing projects that reflected the wide range of complex skills that surveyors need; including urban design, spatial sciences, resource consent planning, engineering design, project management and communication amongst others.
The remaining three entries all showed merit in terms of professional and technical challenges, innovation environment and meeting client needs. The Forsyth Barr Stadium project entered by Beca Christchurch was a commercially complex engineering surveying challenge. The Newhaven development, entered by Staig and Smith, Nelson was a good example of a modern coastal residential development. Beca, Auckland entered Spatially Enabling Tonga – a New National Mapping System and CBD Infrastructure Survey was an important project that significantly improved the urban survey, mapping and GIS of the Kingdom of Tonga.
Further details of the award entries are available at: http://www.surveyors.org.nz/node/95501
