By rosebell
While the deadline of this event for entries is January 9, 2026, it is an annual competition for tunneling engineers aged 33 and younger at the end of the previous year from the submission date and ntrants must submit an original paper relating to any aspect of tunneling which they consider of interest to the tunnelling industry.
The responsibility of reviewing the papers will be up to the BTS Sub-Committee, and on Thursday March 19, 2026 authors of selected papers will be invited to make an oral presentation to the BTS meeting.
Two tickets for the Society’s Annual Dinner, held in May 2026, will be belonged to the winner and they are going to be presented with a certificate. They will also receive £750 and a copy of the BTS’s 50th Anniversary book.
Additionally, finalists whose papers are selected for presentation at the BTS meeting in March will each receive £250 and a single ticket for the Society’s Annual Dinner, whereas all remaining entrants who submitted a paper to an approved standard as determined by the judging panel, will each receive £100.
The papers of the winner and finalists will be published in Tunnels & Tunneling and should not be published elsewhere. Images used in the paper must be high resolution with sources for photographs provided for publication.
The papers not selected for the final presentation may be published in The ICE Proceedings.
The criteria against which entries will be evaluated are:
Paper content
- Importance of the problem to the industry and technical substance of the paper.
- Demonstration of knowledge of subject matter, and aptness of approaches to problem/methods used.
- The author’s personal involvement in the work presented in the paper.
- Clarity of written paper, appropriate use of figures/tables, and illustration of main results/conclusions.
- Appropriate provision of relevant or specific details important to the paper’s objectives.
Presentation
- Overall quality of the delivery.
- Clarity in concisely presenting the main arguments developed in the paper and personal contribution.
- Clarity in providing conclusions/results/lessons learnt.
- Ability to understand/interpret the audience questioning and general interaction with the audience.
- Ability to provide a succinct and accurate response to audience questioning.
Entries are to be submitted to bts.awards@britishtunnelling.com
Questions should be submitted to bts.awards@britishtunnelling.com
and Ken Kwok at ken.kwok@bouygues-construction.com
The Harding Prize 2025 was won by Sidhant Kaul, from Hochtief Murphy JV, with his paper entitled ‘TBM transition through Kidbrooke Shaft, engineering challenges and solutions in the London Power Tunnels Phase 2 Project’.
