By rosebell
Applications for the British Tunnelling Society’s Harding Prize 2027 are now open.
The British Tunnelling Society (BTS) is inviting younger tunnelling engineers to submit an original paper on any aspect of tunnelling – tunnel design, construction or consultancy – which they consider of interest to the tunnelling industry. The paper must be written, submitted and presented by an individual and not a team.
The closing date for the submission of papers is January 8, 2027. The competition is open to all tunnelling engineers aged 33 or under at the end of the previous year from the submission date. BTS membership is not required.
Click here for the competition rules.
The papers will be reviewed by the BTS sub-committee, and authors of selected papers will be invited to make an oral presentation to the BTS meeting on Thursday, March 18, 2027.
The winner will receive £750, a copy of the BTS’s 50th Anniversary Book, and two tickets to the Society’s Annual Dinner, held in May 2027, where they will be presented with a certificate.
Finalists whose papers are selected for presentation at the BTS meeting in March will each receive £250 and a single ticket for the Annual Dinner.
All remaining entrants who submit 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The papers of the winner and finalists will be published in Tunnels & Tunnelling International and should not be published elsewhere. Images need to 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.
Any questions should be sent to bts.awards@britishtunnelling.com and Arabel Vilas Serin at arabel.vilas@GLOBAL.amentum.com.
The Harding Prize is named after the BTS’s founder chairman, Sir Harold Harding.
The winner of the Harding Prize 2026 was Matthew Gibson of Morgan Sindall Infrastructure for his paper entitled Construction of the shaft slipform secondary lining at Thames Tideway West.
