Tidal Creek No 2 Bridge Replacement wins national engineering award

Last night the Tidal Creek No 2 Bridge replacement project in Buller District won an Asset Engineering Excellence Award from the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia (IPWEA NZ).

The project beat other finalists at the Virtual IPWEA Awards Gala evening to take out the Best Public Works Infrastructure Project under $2m category.

The project was submitted for consideration as joint award for WSP and BDC.

Manager infrastructure delivery, Eric de Boer said: “I am incredibly proud of the team’s performance. Being recognised by our peers in the Institute of Public Works Engineers Australasia is a sublime and humbling experience for a project which was well done.”

“WSP deserves special thanks and praise for guiding Council through such an excellent project that met all of its timelines and ensured all project benefits were realised for the local Karamea Community”.

The project was made possible with the support of government funding through Crown Infrastructure Partners and Kānoa – Regional Economic Development and Investment Unit under the Covid-19 ‘shovel ready’ infrastructure projects investment programme.

The Tidal Creek Bridge is located 21 kilometres south of Karamea on the Karamea Highway, and it saw an old single lane bridge replaced with a modern two-lane structure that is capable of taking high productivity motor vehicles with a total weight up to 50 tonnes that meets all national standards.

“This award is a nice moment of recognition for the infrastructure improvements we made last year for the Karamea Community,” said Eric de Boer.

“Its especially poignant now that we still have significant response and recovery work ahead of us on the Karamea Bluff highway section after the devastating February 2022 floods.”

When all the flood affected rebuild work is completed; residents and business in Karamea will have a more enduring and resilient access network for their community.

Info:

Tidal Creek Bridge replacement was completed in record time, judges were impressed by the innovation in project delivery in order to deliver on tight ‘shovel ready’
WSP was the engineering firm and Concrete Structures Ltd was the head
The Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia (IPWEA) is the peak association for the professionals who deliver public works and engineering services to communities in Australia and New
-ENDS-

For more information please contact:
Manager Infrastructure Delivery
Eric de Boer
eric.deboer@bdc.govt.nz