News Oct 14, 2017

Jacobs Recognized for Innovation at Major Water Conference in New Zealand

Jacobs has demonstrated its leading reputation in the global water market after receiving four significant prizes at the 2017 Water New Zealand Awards.

Katrina Bukauskas of Jacobs (Wellington) and Andrew Koolhof from Engineers Without Borders (EWB) picked up the prizes for Best Young Author and Presentation of the Year for their paper on EWB’s work in Cambodia developing technology solutions for sanitation in areas affected by flooding, high groundwater and floating conditions. 

The Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Sanitation in Challenging Environments (SCE) Project takes a sector-wide collaborative and collective impact approach to improve awareness, funding, technology R&D and action in Cambodia. 

Katrina and Andrew are returned field professionals who both spent 12 months in Cambodia leading the SCE Project.

Jacobs and Watercare was also named runner up in the Paper of the Year category for Auckland’s Central Interceptor: Innovations from Planning Through Detailed Design, while their paper on the Use of Physical Modelling and Building Information Modelling for Mangere Wastewater Pump Station was named runner up in the Presentation of the Year category.

The contributing authors of these papers were Stephen Grace (Watercare), Ali Mirza (Jacobs) and Nigel Kay (Jacobs).

The Central Interceptor is a new wastewater tunnel proposed to run between Western Springs and the Mangere Wastewater Treatment Plant to ensure sufficient capacity in the network to meet planned population growth and development in Auckland.

The Mangere Wastewater Pump Station is part of the Central Interceptor Project. It will lift wastewater from the end of 13km long tunnel to Mangere WWTP at a peak flow of 6m3/s. The shaft of the pump station is 40m deep and consists of a diaphragm wall construction. 

The paper presented a Froude scale physical model of the inlet that complemented the geometric scale of 1:8:6 to maintain dynamic similarity to simulate full scale flow conditions; and use of 3D and 6D Building Information Model (BIM) to assist visualisations for safety in design and identify service clashes.

The prizes were presented at the 59th Water New Zealand Conference & Expo, held in Hamilton, New Zealand.