The team responsible for the design of the Brisbane Airport Link projects – the Parsons Brinckerhoff and Arup Joint Venture (PBAJV)  – has received the Special Recognition Award for Sustaining our Society at the Bentley 2012 Be Inspired Awards on 14 November in Amsterdam.

Regarded as the highest honour of the awards program, the Special Recognition Award recognises outstanding achievement in infrastructure – representing the ‘best of the best’ and chosen from a competitive field of entries from across the world.

PBAJV was a finalist in the individual award categories of Innovation in Roads and Connecting Project Teams for its entry for the Airport Link, Northern Busway (Windsor to Kedron) and Airport Roundabout Upgrade projects. Only projects that reach the finalist designation for each category were eligible for a special recognition award.

A project of such significant scale and complexity – at $5.6bn,  it is one of the largest road and transport infrastructure projects in Australia’s history – required a truly collaborative effort to deliver 1,500 separate design packages and more than 35,000 design drawings. Over 1,000 PBAJV team members worked more than one million hours to design this project and provide construction phase support, drawing on their extensive local and international skills and resources. Specialist design professionals were mobilised from around the world to form what became a highly effective delivery team.

Bentley solutions that were used for the design include: (MicroStation, MXROAD, InRoads, Structural Modeler, and gINT) and project collaboration document control (ProjectWise).

PBAJV Technical Director Marty Scrogings (Arup) collected the award on behalf of the joint venture at the official ceremony, along with Mark Patis (PB) and Andrew Lewis (Arup). The PBAJV Project Director had this to say:

“It is a tremendous honour for the PBA team to receive the special recognition award for our work on this complex piece of infrastructure. We thank Bentley for its ongoing support to us throughout the project, and also congratulate all the other finalists and award winners this year.

The entire project team is very proud of our involvement in this project which delivers a social legacy for Brisbane. The design brief challenged us to collaborate intensively to produce technically excellent solutions that are world class on every possible measure. The sheer size of the Airport Link projects bring with it a huge engineering challenge in terms of coordination and management of the design teams, the number of drawings to be produced, and best practice data management.

As a collaborative tool, Bentley ProjectWise enabled us to meet the project’s challenging design brief, ultimately helping the PBA team and our construction partners Thiess John Holland to redefine the urban fabric of our city through an innovative and inspired design.” Luke van Heuzen, PBAJV Project Director

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How the Special Recognition Awards are determined

Winners of the Special Recognition awards exemplify outstanding projects nominated by the jurors themselves as representing both excellence and innovation in a way that is emblematic of Bentley’s mission of sustaining infrastructure.
Only projects that reach the finalist designation for each category are eligible for a special recognition award. PBAJV was a finalist in the following categories:

• Innovation in Roads
• Connecting Project Teams

About PBAJV

BrisConnections were appointed by the Queensland Government to deliver these projects. BrisConnections contracted Thiess John Holland to undertake the design and construction. Thiess John Holland engaged PBAJV to deliver the tender and detailed design for the project.

On the completion of the project, the Northern Busway and Airport Roundabout Upgrade were handed over to the Queensland Government, and BrisConnections will operate and maintain the Airport Link toll road for a 45 year concession period.

The PBA JV’s scope of works includes tunnelling, road, geotechnical, electrical and mechanical, structural and drainage design, urban design, fire and life safety, project approvals and overall lead consultancy services.