Sir Robert McAlpine’s conservation of the famous Elizabeth Tower (Big Ben) and Laing O’Rourke’s pioneering work on the new Everton FC stadium were among the big winners at the Digital Construction Awards, held last night before nearly 450 of the sector’s leading lights.
After 160 years of pollution, weather and war damage, the Elizabeth Tower (Big Ben) was in urgent need of an upgrade. Sir Robert McAlpine carried out the extensive conservation work – underpinned by an incredibly complex and rigorous BIM strategy. The project secured the Digital Construction Project of the Year trophy, sponsored by Revizto.
Laing O’Rourke won two trophies on the night. First, the contractor won Digital Innovation in Productivity, sponsored by Graitec, for revolutionising reinforcement design, removing paper from the process and replacing it with an intelligent, user-friendly, more certain 3D approach on the Everton FC stadium project.
Laing O’Rourke’s second win of the night was in the Digital Collaboration of the Year category, sponsored by Bluebeam. The contractor, along with BDP and Solibri, enhanced the approach to fire stopping.
Graham is Contractor of the Year
Graham emerged triumphant as Digital Contractor of the Year, sponsored by Procore. The contractor decided to re-evaluate its digital strategy during 2022 and made a conscious decision to put its site teams at the centre of its thinking.
Bond Bryan Digital secured the Digital Consultancy of the Year trophy, sponsored by Zero.
The consultancy impressed the judges with its ‘information first’ approach and joined-up thinking, starting with a project’s requirements and running right through to delivery.
Other consultancies that won on the night were Faithful + Gould and Laminar Projects. Faithful + Gould won Best Application of Technology, sponsored by Everwarm, for its Local ID tool. This gives developers and local authorities the power to leverage a wide range of data so that they can analyse, improve and optimise their housing developments.
Laminar Projects secured Best Use of Data on a Project, sponsored by nima, for its approach to digital transformation. Laminar delivered significant savings to the Eiffage, Kier, Ferrovial and BAM Nuttall joint venture working on HS2 Phase 1.
HS2 also featured in L Lynch’s victory in the Digital Innovation in Health, Safety and Wellbeing category, sponsored by the Association for Project Safety. Lynch and the Skanska Costain Strabag JV approached Safety Shield to develop a bespoke system to enable dump trucks to recognise people within a 60m radius and to autonomously start braking at 10m to a controlled stop at 2m.
The Balfour Beatty Atkins JV (BBA) with National Highways won Digital Innovation in Asset Management, sponsored by the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management. BBA pushed new boundaries in the handover of major highway projects to the maintenance contractor through its work on the A19 Norton to Wynyard project in the North East.
Skanska’s net zero victory
Skanska scooped the Delivering Net Zero with Digital Innovation trophy, sponsored by Sir Robert McAlpine. Skanska developed a platform for creating and sharing relational databases that collects and calculates carbon factor information. Through automatic pipelines, the information integrates with Skanska’s 3D models.
Su Butcher, programme manager at BIM for Housing Associations, project manager of the plain language guide editorial board at the Institution of Engineering and Technology, and a great many other roles, was honoured with the Digital Construction Champion of the Year award, sponsored by BIMcollab.
And finally, FM Conway business analyst Lauren Parsons picked up the Digital Rising Star of the Year, sponsored by the Chartered Institute of Building.
Stay tuned to BIMplus and Construction Management to find out more about the winners.
The awards ceremony took place at the Brewery in London. Comedian Rob Beckett entertained the guests. The awards are run by Digital Construction Week, the CIOB, and Construction Management and BIMplus.
For more information on the awards, visit the website.
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