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ICE Awards

ICE Awards

The annual ICE Awards recognise outstanding civil engineering achievements and contributions to both the profession and the institution. Learn about each award below.

Gold Medal – engineering excellence

The Gold Medal is an award that aligns with the ICE’s commitment to enhance the technical knowledge and ethical understanding of engineers wherever they work in the world.

The Gold Medal recognises an individual whose sustained insightful and ethical contribution to civil engineering is significant enough to merit a premier award from the institution.

The awards committee is particularly keen to recognise someone who has demonstrably worked to share lessons learnt for the good of the profession.

Bev Waugh Award – productivity and culture

The Bev Waugh Award aligns with the ICE’s commitment to transform productivity in the industry by acknowledging an individual who has had a significant positive impact on teamwork.

The award recognises someone who quietly broadens the perspective of their team, leads with kindness, values the views of others and constructively questions the status quo to create a people-centred best-for-project culture.

Tom Barton Award

Introduced in collaboration with the Get It Right Initiative, the Tom Barton Award recognises excellence in implementing initiatives to improve quality, productivity, safety and sustainability by eradicating mistakes.

Nominations are particularly welcomed for young professionals who have demonstrably enhanced project efficiency.

Garth Watson Medal – Institutional award for valued service

Awarded to an ICE member or employee to recognise long, dedicated and valuable service to the institution.

Warren Medal

Awarded to an ICE member in recognition of valuable service rendered to their region.

Edmund Hambly Medal – creative design for sustainable development

The Edmund Hambly Medal aligns with the ICE’s commitment to improve resilience, sustainability and inclusivity. It’s an award for the creative design of an engineering project that has made a substantial contribution to sustainable development and climate adaptation.

The medal celebrates the contributions of civil engineers and other built environment professionals to sharing inspiring, replicable solutions and changing people’s perceptions about what excellence looks like.

Brunel Medal – recognition of low-carbon solutions in the built environment

The Brunel Medal aligns with the ICE’s commitment to place decarbonisation at the heart of the industry’s agenda. It is awarded to recognise excellence in civil engineering and decarbonising infrastructure.

People, teams or organisations delivering a low-carbon solution in the built environment can enter by demonstrating how their work has hastened progress towards net zero. Their use of PAS 2080 would be of interest to the judges, but it’s not essential.

This award recognises work that has benefited society through sustainable water management. The work could be an engineering project, a programme of works, a policy or a piece of research.

The award is open to individuals or organisations anywhere in the world, including water companies, consultants, contractors, research bodies, regulators, governments and community groups.

The institution recognises that it may sometimes be hard to show that a given piece of work has been completed, but the submission must demonstrate its benefits. Nominations may be made by ICE members or non-members.

Entries may be made as an individual or as part of a project, by completing an application. Those nominating others for the award must have approval from the individual or a representative of the project concerned. The nominee should be aware that the information may be used in articles published on the ICE’s website.

Winners of our 2025 awards

Gold Medal winner: Adrian Arnold

With more than 46 years’ civil engineering experience, Adrian Arnold has dedicated much of his career to improving shipyard planning, design and construction practice around the world.

Having accumulated an extensive body of knowledge in shipyard development, he has co-written numerous papers on the topic. In 2013, he expanded and revised part three of BS 6349, the British standard for maritime works.

Adrian’s dedication to his profession and charitable work has been remarkable, as has his contribution to the whole shipyard sector.

International Medal winner: Kamlesh Kumar Maurya

With nearly two decades’ experience in civil engineering and infrastructure projects, Kamlesh Kumar Maurya is a distinguished building information modelling (BIM) lead. He is an ICE Fellow and member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. In a career spanning a wide range of high-impact projects across India, the UK and the US, he has focused on using cutting-edge digital innovations in BIM to deliver sustainable infrastructure.

Kamlesh’s work is distinguished by technical excellence, effective leadership and a steadfast commitment to decarbonisation. His strategic use of advanced BIM technologies, focus on resource efficiency and commitment to professional development have significantly advanced the institution’s carbon reduction goals.

Bev Waugh Award winner: Nick Wightman

Ever since joining Amey in 2021, Nick Wightman has had a significant impact upon his team and the Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU) project.

He has been pivotal in standardising designs and building efficiencies on the project, enabling the team to focus on more complex, bespoke design solutions. This approach has helped to overcome challenges posed by the project’s funding structure, which is based on sections of the railway rather than the whole route.

By outlining the cost savings in each section, Nick was able to demonstrate 'best-for-project' principles to TRU alliance partners. These negotiation efforts helped to break down barriers across the project, earning him great feedback for his vision.

President's Medal winner: Sir John Armitt

Sir John Armitt has been awarded the 2025 President’s Medal for his unwavering support of the ICE and the infrastructure agenda.

A past president of the institution, Sir John recently stepped down from the National Infrastructure Commission, having chaired the body since 2018, on its merger with the Infrastructure and Projects Authority to form the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority.

This award recognises the achievements of his long and storied career. These include completing the High Speed 1 rail link on time and on budget; transforming Railtrack into Network Rail; and delivering the infrastructure, stadiums and housing required by the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Such successes have transformed civil engineering, elevating the profession to new heights.

Garth Watson Medal winner: Keith Jones

Keith Jones is the ICE’s regional director for Wales Cymru. He is a Chartered Civil Engineer, ICE Fellow, Chartered Environmentalist and Fellow of the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation.

He has enhanced the ICE’s profile in Wales over several decades, forging strong relationships with policy-makers, industry stakeholders and the public.

Keith’s legacy includes his achievements in nurturing future engineers. In 2023 alone, he helped the ICE to reach more than 2,700 students through STEM initiatives. His mentorship, belief in others and boundless enthusiasm embody the institution’s values.

Tom Barton Award 2025 winner: Dr Kathy Ziwei Wen

To gain her DPhil in engineering science at the University of Oxford in 2024, Kathy Ziwei Wen studied the mechanical behaviour of sandy soils and its implications for offshore foundation design.

Her research – conducted under the Picaso Project, Oxford’s joint initiative with Danish energy giant Ørsted – advanced the profession’s understanding of how soils react to cyclic loading. The findings helped to improve foundation design methods for offshore wind turbines.

Kathy showed exceptional leadership on this study, while her integration of geotechnical expertise and statistical modelling set a new benchmark in addressing complex offshore construction challenges.

Her work has produced a transferable solution for future projects that will elevate industry standards.

Warren Medal 2025 winner: Dr Lavinia Melilla

Holding a doctorate in hydraulic civil engineering from Sapienza University of Rome, Lavinia Melilla is construction programme director at the Doha office of the Parsons Corporation. She is the first woman in Qatar to hold such a role, where leads complex projects for the US-based multinational across EMEA.

An ICE Fellow, Lavinia led the design proposal for one of the world’s largest stormwater tunnels, introducing a pioneering water recycling strategy.

She has earned several awards in fields including health and safety (maintaining a zero-accident record across her projects), sustainability, innovation and programme excellence.

Edmund Hambly Medal winner: Connswater Community Greenway and East Belfast Flood Alleviation Scheme (phase two)

The Connswater Community Greenway (CCG) is a transformative social infrastructure project that’s regenerated a socioeconomically disadvantaged area of east Belfast.

Three client organisations collaborated to deliver this project: EastSide Partnership, Belfast City Council and DfI Rivers. Their joint effort enabled Arup to design solutions that enhanced the quality of the infrastructure, reduced its cost, minimised disruption and maximised biodiversity.

The project has created assets including a 9km linear park featuring enriched natural habitats and playgrounds; a 16km route for pedestrians and cyclists; and a civic square.

Benefiting 40,000 residents and those attending 23 local schools and colleges, the CCG has also protected 1,700 properties from flooding.

Brunel Medal Medal winner: Hiperpile

The Hiperpile is a multidisciplinary collaboration between academia, industry and government that turns piled foundations into energy-enabled assets.

The product reduces embodied carbon in deep, piled foundations. Its use as a renewable energy source and storage system can also cut operational carbon in buildings and heat networks by up to 80%.

The Hiperpile’s multidisciplinary nature gives it wide range of use cases. It has been installed on projects including HS2’s Euston Skills Centre, Manchester Airport Terminal 2, the Tottenham Hotspur Hotel and The Line smart city in Saudi Arabia.

Chris Binnie Award winner: Peru Reconstruction Programme – Integrated Solutions

In 2017, the Coastal Niño floods that struck Peru destroyed 115,000 homes and left 178,000 people homeless. In 2020, the then Department for International Trade signed an agreement with Peru’s government to help it rebuild critical infrastructure.

The UK team appointed to deliver the Integrated Solutions programme comprised Arup, Gleeds and Mace. This represents a £3.7bn investment to protect 16 million Peruvians from further flooding. It has produced structural and nature-based flood management solutions covering 900km of rivers; urban drainage infrastructure in six cities; and an early-warning system to mitigate the impact of future disasters.

Some of the flood management solutions are helping to restore natural ecosystems, while others have revived ancestral technologies, such as stone dykes and terracing, to mitigate soil erosion.

The programme has also transferred tools and knowledge that will increase Peru’s ability to deliver large-scale infrastructure projects independently and benefit more of its communities in the future.

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