California Engineering Projects: Excellent!

ACEC California’s Engineering Excellence Awards competition has grown in stature and size over the years. This year, no less than 46 major projects were considered for awards and in the next 22 weeks we’ll be profiling many of them.

The competition has become an effective tool for engineering and surveying firms to gain much-deserved recognition for projects that benefit local communities and California as a whole. Indeed, last year, a California project garnered the coveted national Grand Conceptor Award bestowed by ACEC’s national organization in Washington DC. HDR Engineering’s Advanced Energy Recovery System (ARES) designed and built for onion processor Gills Onions in Oxnard, Calif. was a prime example of private sector initiative and expertise in action.

This year, ACEC California is proud to announce that the Golden State Award goes to T.Y. Lin International for the East Tie-In Structure, which is part of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Seismic Safety Projects. The Joint Venture of T.Y. Lin International/Moffat & Nichol was contracted by California Department of Transportation to design the 288 foot-long detour structure, a double deck steel truss, that was assembled 150 feet above ground and rolled into place over the course of a four-day long weekend. This temporary detour set the highest standard for engineering excellence and marks an unprecedented feat of design engineering and is the most significant realignment of traffic to the Bay Bridge to date.