Arup scooped two top prizes in the hotly contested International Tunnelling Awards, held in Hong Kong on 1 December.
The Hong Kong West Drainage Tunnel (HKWDT) won the top prize in the Tunnelling Project of the Year (US$100m to US$1bn) category. This was the only Hong Kong-based project in the three tunnelling categories, and was chosen over six other finalists selected from numerous entries submitted by contractors and consultants worldwide.
The judging committee was greatly impressed with the challenges that HKWDT had overcome and recommended that other projects should take a close look and learn from the experiences gained.
Arup also collected the top prize in the Technical Innovation of the Year category for the design of an energy-saving segmental tunnel lining system. A collaboration between Arup, Rehau and Zublin, the lining system uses ground-source energy and waste heat from tunnel operations to heat buildings above ground and cooling systems inside the tunnel.
The judging committee highly praised the system as "a genuinely scalable innovation which provides real sustainable advantages. It turns a simple tunnel into a multi-function structure which is heating or cooling the tunnel environment. It can increase the value of your tunnel asset."