By Ashley Karen
Cowi in North America has won an ACEC New York Engineering Excellence Diamond Award in the Special Project category.
The award is assigned for the design-build quality oversight for the Hugh L Carey and Queens Midtown Tunnels project. In addition, the project is a finalist to illustrate the ACEC New York in the national competition supported by the American Council of Engineering Companies.
The two tunnels are over 70 years old and boosted to manage problems with age and the devastating impacts of Hurricane Sandy in 2021.
The Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority contracted Cowi, in a JV with CHA Consulting and operating as the owner’s engineer to provide quality oversight for five design-build contracts conveying US$123m of resilience upgrades for the tunnels.
The joint venture delivered oversight and coordination of new ventilation and fire safety systems, containing state-of-the-art smoke detection and communication systems.
Cowi’s method of alternative project delivery enabled the work to be surveyed efficiently, in a coordinated manner, with many stakeholders, and with no disruptions to the public. Considerable work was done during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the project was finished according to the plan and under budget, despite the obstacles generated by the pandemic.
Cowi stated that the design-build quality oversight for the project would function as a helpful model for modernizing New York’s aging infrastructure via cost-effective project delivery models.
Steven Kramer, senior vice-president and project director for the upgrade, expressed: “Working on such a deep-rooted part of our transport network can be challenging but our proactivity and collaboration with construction partners provided a design-build model that offered significant cost and schedule reductions.”
He also asserted that it was “hugely rewarding” for the Cowi team to be recognized by ACEC New York.
The ACEC New York awards will be presented at an event in New York on March 24.
