Flood scheme wins BCI Award

The River Witham Flood Defence Scheme has won the Best Practice Award at the highly prestigious BCI Awards, which were presented on 10 October at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London's Park Lane.

The BCI Awards are widely regarded as the construction industry's 'Oscars'. They are the most rigorously judged awards with all short listed projects visited by members of the judging panel.

Judges said the use of recycled car tyres had a strong chance of take up on other projects

The process lasts for several months and culminates in the Awards Dinner, which is one of the highlights of the construction industry calendar.

Short listed projects in all categories were eligible for the Best Practice Award, which is for 'projects which involved processes adopted to understand and meet client needs, supported team working throughout and maintained continuous improvement'.

Judges said that 'the use of more than one million recycled car tyres to create bales was impressive - with a strong chance of take up on other projects', and that 'the project demonstrated a great measure of lateral thinking - in funding, organisation and technology'.

Under the scheme, improvements have been carried out to 30km of the River Witham bank, across 50 separate sites. An integrated team comprising the Environment Agency (customer), Faber Maunsell (consultant) and May Gurney as contractor worked together closely and successfully to deliver the project.

Designs were prepared on site for each location to optimise the opportunity for value engineering and to find local solutions. Borrow pits close to the river allowed water borne transport to be used.

Other innovations included combining the waterproofing properties of polythene and bentonite to prevent seepage, and the use of more than one million recycled tyres in compressed bales as low-weight embankment fill material.