August 2010
Halcrow’s Cobbins Brook Flood Alleviation Scheme and Hartham Weir project were the toast of the 2010 ICE East of England awards.
Fourteen civil engineering projects were honoured in the ICE East of England 2010 Merit Awards. The awards recognised excellence in the design and construction of projects that have delighted clients and in many cases brought benefits to the public.
The Awards were presented by the ICE President Professor Paul Jowitt at the East of England annual dinner at Downing College, Cambridge.
The awards are broken down into the three categories of:
1. Physical Achievement
2. Technical Excellence/Innovation
3. Sustainability
Each category is divided into projects below and above £2.5million. Some projects were entered under more the one category making 17 entries in total, the largest number of entries ever received.
The highest award is Exceptional Merit of which five were awarded – two of them to the Cobbins Brook Flood Alleviation Scheme, Waltham Abbey.
The £6million project reduces the risk of flooding to 314 properties in Waltham Abbey and the M25. It involved creating the largest storage reservoir to be built in the South of England in the past decade, capable of holding 750,000 m3 of water.
The project was awarded Exceptional Merit under the Physical Achievement and Sustainability categories.
Halcrow’s Hartham Weir project near Hertford was commended in the Physical Achievement under 2.5m category.
The project replaced an existing weir that was the main cause for undermining the Stevenage trunk sewer which crosses the River Lee in Hertford, Hertfordshire. The design was developed to enhance the current usage of the river popular with canoeist and anglers by providing passageway for canoes and fish migration.
A satisfactory compromise was achieved with a simple sustainable design to the satisfaction of the local authority which has taken ownership of the structure. The design was a two stage weir which provides the necessary hydraulic conditions for coarse fish migration cross the structure and learner canoeist can experience white water effect traversing down the weir.