The American Council of Engineering Companies of Louisiana announced the winners of the first annual Engineering Excellence Award on October 10, 2019. Fenstermaker’s Engineering Team was selected  as Grand Category Award Winner in two categories. This annual event recognizes engineering projects which exhibit extraordinary levels of innovation, complexity, achievement, and value. The statewide competition is a prerequisite for eligibility in the 2020 ACEC National Engineering Excellence Award competition. Winners of the national competition will be announced at ACEC’s EEA Gala in Washington, D.C. on April 28, 2020.

The SASOL USA Mega Project – Heavy Haul Road was selected as the Grand Award Category Winner of Category L: Industrial & Manufacturing Process & Facilities. This $60 million project included improving 2.4 miles of LA 379 to accommodate the transport of large SASOL modules to the site, which involved over 700 oversized/overweight permit loads as large as 50’W x 50’H x 315’L and exceeding 3,000 tons. This project also included the design of nearly 3 miles of subsurface drainage, relocation of numerous public and private utilities, upgrades to several intersections as well as rotating mast arm signal poles and implementation of an adaptive traffic management system, both of which were the first in the state of Louisiana. You can read more about the Heavy Haul Road project here.

The US 90 (I-49 South) Albertson’s Pkwy to Ambassador Caffery Design-Build Project was selected as the Grand Award Category Winner for Category H: Transportation. The complexity of this project included the design of a 6-lane wide bridge structure to be constructed in three separate phases while maintaining a traffic count of over 50,000 vehicles a day. This concept created considerable construction challenges. The project included frontage roads, service roads, and adjacent local streets with each requiring geometric challenges to meet interstate design code within a very tight right-of-way corridor. The design team met the challenge of having all components for this project completed within a 1-1/2 year time frame. Read more about the US 90 (I-49 South) Design-Build project here.

The Engineering Excellence Ceremony will be held on November 21, 2019, at the Renaissance Hotel in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. One Grand Award Category Winner will be selected as the overall project winner and receive the Grand Conceptor Award. This best of show award will be announced on the evening of the awards ceremony. There will also be a People’s Choice Award presented during the ceremony by a vote of the attendees.

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