ICE Awards: this year’s winners revealed – and your chance to enter for 2025

The Bev Waugh Award for productivity and culture went to Martha McGowan.

McGowan was selected as the winner for her contribution to the British Antarctic Survey.

As a project manager, she led more than 60 people at Rothera Research Station to deliver a new wharf that would be big enough to accommodate Royal Research Ship Sir David Attenborough.

Her team worked harmoniously alongside the station’s staff, scientists and designers to deliver the facility on time and on budget between October 2018 and April 2020.

The Garth Watson Medal, which celebrates valued service to the ICE, was awarded to Andrew Stanley.

Stanley joined the ICE as head of education and learning in 2008 with a remit to inspire future engineers. Among his many significant achievements thereafter, he:

• introduced the first 14-19 schools strategy that brought together STEM ambassadors;
• ran the education and careers panel;
• wrote the first ICE safeguarding policy;
• worked on the planning group for the inaugural Big Bang!; and
• contributed to Professor John Perkins’ Review of Engineering Skills in 2013 and the follow-up report in 2019.

Stanley’s management of the QUEST scholarships programme has arguably been his most outstanding contribution. This has supported about 1,200 engineering students since 2008.

On his watch, the scheme broadened its reach, enhancing the reputation and the diversity of the ICE’s membership (half of the scholarships over the past eight years have gone to women).

The Gold Medal, awarded for engineering excellence, went to Peter Kydd.

Kydd is an ICE Fellow with more than 45 years’ professional experience. He specialises as a consultant engineer in carbon reduction, renewable energy, water and transport.

Although he’s retired, he continues to advise national and local governments. He’s also a strategic consultant to WSP, undertaking due diligence in areas such as climate change action planning, decarbonisation and tidal power.

Kydd won the Gold Medal for his contributions to renewable energy use and decarbonisation across the transport and water sectors, along with his work to support economic growth in South West England.

The International Medal celebrates outstanding contributions to decarbonising civil engineer. This year it went to Rajiv Iyer.

Iyer was selected for the medal based on his trailblazing work in nuclear engineering.

He’s the technical civil lead for the techno-commercial offering of the ‘nuclear island’ portion of EDF’s proposed 9,900MW power plant near Jaitapur, India.

Iyer has shown great commitment to integrating global best practices in this project.

As it becomes a benchmark for responsible nuclear engineering, it’s poised to influence future projects and encourage a global shift towards sustainable approaches in the field, aligning with the UN Sustainable Development Goals 7, 9 and 17.

The Tom Barton Award celebrates quality, productivity, safety and sustainability through the eradication of mistakes.

Pedro Carvalho Costa, WSP’s request-for-information lead for the High Speed 2 project at Old Oak Common in west London, was this year’s winner.

On starting in this role in January 2023, he led an initiative to streamline the process of recording and communicating changes and clarifications.

This created the project’s changes and clarifications register (C&CR), a smart spreadsheet used to record all relevant information.

All external communications between WSP and other stakeholders in the project are now mandatorily included in the C&CR.

The Warren Medal for valued service to ICE regions was awarded to Tarig Hamza.

A Fellow of the ICE and the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation, Hamza is highly regarded by his peers in the Middle East.

His involvement in the ICE UAE Committee spans more than seven years, with his ongoing commitment reflected in his current role as honorary secretary.

Hamza’s approachability, willingness to listen and enduring support have created an environment where members feel valued, nurtured and encouraged to reach their full potential.

The awards committee agreed that his input had demonstrated significant outcomes that have clearly aided the development of engineers in the UAE and beyond.

The Brunel Medal, which recognises low-carbon solutions in the built environment, went to the University of Auckland’s B201 building project.

B201 was built in the 1970s as the University of Auckland’s social sciences building.

By the mid-2010s, it was no longer fit for purpose. An innovative design strategy was identified that offered world-leading sustainability and better value for money than the initial light-touch refurbishment and demolition/rebuild options.

The redeveloped building is a cutting-edge facility offering a range of uses for its 26,500m² space.

Adaptive reuse of the primary structure has reduced upfront CO2 emissions by more than 30%, compared with demolition and rebuilding – on top of the significant programme saving.

The project’s managers chose the best sustainability outcome at every step.

The cost of cutting carbon has been estimated at about NZ$130 (£61) per tonne.

This makes this project more economically efficient than many other building-related decarbonisation initiatives.

The Chris Binnie Award celebrates sustainable water management. This year, it went to the creation of the Hauz Khas urban wetlands project in New Delhi, India.

This was a citizen-led initiative, in partnership with the Delhi Development Authority and Evolve, to clean the 6ha Hauz Khas Lake, including an open sewer inlet and a stormwater drain leading to it from the adjacent public park.

The project was selected for its innovative use of local materials, sound engineering practice and community collaboration. It demonstrated what can be achieved with minimal funding to implement effective nature-based solutions.

The scheme created more than 600m2 of constructed and floating wetlands and a solar aerator (mixes oxygen into a body of water) in what had been an unsightly and foul-smelling drain.

This had greatly improved the lake’s condition, delivering real water-treatment infrastructure.

Furthermore, it has taught 600-plus citizens (including schoolchildren) how to make floating wetlands and it shows that Delhi’s lakes can be cleaned and managed economically without having to add chemicals.

The Edmund Hambly Medal for creative design for sustainable development went to the revitalisation of the Tung Chung Stream in Hong Kong.

The winner in this category provides an outstanding example of sustainable development that effectively supports ecological conservation and human advancement. The awards committee agreed that this is how it should be done.

This project is restoring a channelised section of the Tung Chung Stream (TCS) on Lantau Island to its natural state and developing it into a river park – the first of its kind in Hong Kong.

More than 40 native plant species will be planted to enhance the environment and boost biodiversity, while predictive tech will be installed to monitor water levels upstream and provide a comprehensive flood-warning system.

The project will significantly upgrade the standard of protection from flooding in TCS from a one-in-50-year level of severity to a one-in-200-year level.

• First place, receiving the Telford Gold Medal: Control of screw pile installation to optimise performance for offshore energy applications (Géotechnique).
• Second place, receiving the George Stephenson Medal: Design and use of space in refugee camps: a case study of a contested terrain (Urban Design and Planning).
• Third place, receiving the Benjamin Baker Medal: Fatigue durability of reinforced concrete bridge deck repair methods (Bridge Engineering).

• Best paper on health and safety matters: The role of the construction project manager in developing a culture of suicide prevention (Management, Procurement and Law).
• Best paper covering ICT/GIS/BIM in its broadest sense: Framing blockchain-integrated digital twins for emergent healthcare: a proof of concept (Engineering Sustainability).
• Best paper on offshore matters, receiving the David Hislop Award: Adaptivity of plate anchors to restrain the impact of seabed trenching (Géotechnique Letters).
• Best paper on research innovation in civil engineering that leads to real-world impact: Maximising the construction waste reduction potential – barriers and catalysts (Civil Engineering).
• Best papers written by authors not based in the UK, or covering a project outside the UK:
• Study on the performance of thermal energy of a classroom built with natural materials (Energy).
• Coupled THM analysis of a full-scale test for high-level nuclear waste and spent fuel disposal under actual repository conditions during 18 years of operation (Géotechnique).

• From Bridge Engineering, receiving the John Henry Garrood King Medal: Planning and design of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, North America.
• From Civil Engineering, receiving the Coopers Hill War Memorial Prize: Construction engineering at The Acre, UK: how innovative props facilitated building reuse.
• From Construction Materials, receiving the Thomas Howard Medal: Improving the lateral load resistance of vernacular masonry walls subject to flooding.
• From Energy, receiving the James Watt Medal: Integrating existing water and wastewater assets to reduce domestic heating emissions.
• From Engineering and Computational Mechanics, receiving the Telford Premium: A multi-objective design tool for decarbonising buildings at the concept stage.
• From Engineering History and Heritage, receiving the Telford Premium: Heritage building information modelling: a case study of Kasthamandap, Nepal.
• From Engineering Sustainability, receiving the Richard Trevithick Prize: Resource efficiency in industrialised construction: a study in developing economies.
• From Forensic Engineering, receiving the Telford Premium: Understanding the performance of bridge decks through full-scale accelerated testing.
• From Geotechnical Engineering, receiving the Crampton Prize: Cutting shoe design for open caissons in sand: influence on vertical bearing capacity.
• From Géotechnique, receiving the Geotechnical Research Medal: Characterisation of soil deformation over wide strain ranges in triaxial test with high-precision stereophotogrammetry.
• From Géotechnique Letters, receiving the Telford Premium: Adaptivity of plate anchors to restrain the impact of seabed trenching.
• From Ground Improvement, receiving the Telford Premium: Effects of biochar on cement-stabilised peat soil.
• From Maritime Engineering, receiving the Halcrow Prize: State of the art in structural health monitoring of offshore and marine structures.
• From Municipal Engineer, receiving the James Hill Prize: Use of digital technology to improve the way asphalt roads are constructed.
• From Structures and Buildings, receiving the Frederick Palmer Prize: Analysis of axially loaded columns strengthened with fibre-reinforced polymer.
• From Transport, receiving the William Webb Award: Detecting crash hotspots using grid and density-based spatial clustering.
• From Transport, receiving the Rees Jeffreys Prize: Fully automated vehicles: the use of travel time and its association with intention to use.
• From Urban Design and Planning, receiving the Reed and Mallik Medal: Using child-friendly city principles to improve dilapidated neighbourhoods, Tehran, Iran.
• From Waste and Resource Management, receiving the Telford Premium: Circular economy landfills for temporary storage and treatment of mineral-rich wastes.
• From Water Management, receiving the Robert Alfred Carr Prize: Bottom and side-wall aeration performance of an offset aerator in a flood discharge chute.