The joint venture team who designed and constructed the Darwin Convention Centre has won the Northern Territory’s most prestigious engineering award.
The joint venture team of Laing O’Rourke, Sitzler, Connell Wagner and AE Smith shared the Engineering Australia Northern Division Engineering Excellence Award with Nilsen (NT) for their work on the Darwin Convention Centre project.
Fittingly, the awards ceremony was held at the Darwin Convention Centre which has been operational since July.
Construction Manager Steve Shenfield said the award was in recognition of the engineering initiatives undertaken on the project.
“Our Fire Engineering team undertook complicated modelling of the facility and were able to successfully verify a number of innovative solutions which resulted in a considerable saving to the construction costs,” Steve said.
The Engineers Australia award follows on from the team winning the President’s Award at the Territory Construction Awards (TCA) held in August.
Speaking at the awards ceremony, also held at the Darwin Convention Centre, TCA general manager Graham Kemp said the President’s Award was a tribute to excellent work.
"The President's Award is equivalent to the best-in-show and is judged on workmanship, execution of the project and innovation," Graham said.
"Judges chose the Sitzler Laing O'Rourke Joint Venture project over the other category winners not only because it is quite obviously a very impressive building with complex services in a challenging location, but they managed to complete the project ahead of schedule."
Construction Manager Steve Shenfield said the Darwin Convention Centre was a landmark project which would count as one of his career highlights.
“It’s one of those jobs that makes a difference,” Steve said. “It took in excess of 700,000 man hours, there were no lost time incidents and more than 90 per cent of sub-contractors and suppliers were local.
“It is the result of the one team approach and a reflection on the commitment of all parties involved with the project from the general hands on site to the client, consultants, operator and sub contractor’s management.”
Northern Territory Manager Dick Guit said that project’s award wins were a credit to all those involved, from inception to completion.
The purpose-built, world-class Darwin Convention Centre, which has been described as ‘the jewel in the crown’ of the Darwin City Waterfront Redevelopment, features 4000 square metres of exhibition space, a 1500-seat auditorium, and meeting and function rooms.
The Darwin Convention Centre project will now compete for both the Engineers Australia and Master Builders national awards later this year.