GeoEngineers, Inc. has been shortlisted in the Design Innovation of the Year category at the 2015 Tunnelling & Underground Space Awards for its Direct Pipe® Crossing of the Sabine-Neches Waterway and Levee Project.
The awards are sponsored by New Civil Engineers (NCE), the official magazine of the global Institution of Civil Engineers that has an audience of 80,000+ professional engineers. Shortlisted contenders converge on London, England on December 3 at the Grosvenor House Hotel, London, for the announcement of winners. GeoEngineers Principal Jonathan L. Robison, PE, Geotechnical Group Leader in Springfield, Missouri, will be representing GeoEngineers at the event.
For its Design Innovation of the Year shortlisted project, GeoEngineers provided geotechnical and trenchless engineering design along with construction monitoring services for the successful completion of the first Direct Pipe® (DP) crossing of a US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)-regulated levee and the longest DP crossing to date (3,457 feet) in North America.
The 48-inch-diameter pipeline stretches for more than a half-mile crossing under the Sabine-Neches Waterway and the levee and railroad tracks in Port Arthur, Texas. The City of Port Arthur, Texas needed to deliver water to the other side of a deep shipping channel and a hurricane flood protection levee. The usual choice of trenchless construction — horizontal directional drilling (HDD) — wasn’t feasible because HDD could not meet the USACE safety standards that are designed to protect the levee and public. By thinking out-of-the-box, and building upon its prior innovations in DP design, GeoEngineers combined different approaches to trenchless technology and design to come up with a new solution that led to success.
The NCE Tunnelling & Underground Space Awards have had a record-breaking year with more than 80 organizations entering their projects and initiatives into the awards. The full list of finalists can be found here: https://tunnellingawards.nce.co.uk/2015-Shortlist
NCE Editor Mark Hansford commented, “This year’s finalists have all demonstrated how the international tunnelling industry has continued to drive innovation, and improve safety. Picking our winners is a tough challenge and this year we are helped with a greatly expanded panel of judges representing clients, academia, consultants and contractors from across the globe. The winners will be truely exceptional.”
