Stormwater Management And Road Tunnel (“SMART”), clinched The Prestigious British Construction Industry Awards (“BCIA”) 2008, when it was announced the winner for The “International Award” Category at the 21st Anniversary of the British Construction Industry Awards Ceremony held in London UK , recently.

SMART, the world’s first dual purpose tunnel was chosen by a distinguished panel of judges to having the most innovative engineering solution that solved two of Kuala Lumpur’s long standing problems: flooding in the city centre caused by overflowing rivers and traffic congestion in the south of the city.

The panel of judges comprised head of civil engineering institutions and top construction contractors and consultants in the international engineering industry renowned for their strict selection processes and in depth evaluation of engineering solutions. What won the judges over was the ability of the turnkey contractor to effectively prove SMART’s viability of having saved Kuala Lumpur from severe flooding and double as a traffic solution in the city centre.

“An extraordinary and genuinely unique project driven by the urgent need to solve Kuala Lumpur ’s devastating stormwater flooding problems. The real achievement was to make the project work,” was how the judges panel described SMART’s entry.

The 9.7km long tunnel that was built using two 13.2 diameter sized slurry shield tunnel boring machines, which tunneled safely beneath Kuala Lumpur’s city centre through karstic limestone geology, fulfilled the judges criteria in having shown excellence for architectural and engineering, quality of design and construction, safety and innovation.

In winning the award SMART beat four other short listed international projects such as the Bijlmer Arena Station in Amsterdam, Kensington Oval Cricket Ground in Barbados, Shin-Marunouchi Towers in Japan, and Beijing International Airport T3 in China.

The BCIA is the most influential awards programme in the industry and is often regarded as the ‘Oscars’ of construction. It is the most respected and rigorously judged construction awards scheme in the United Kingdom.

For this year’s awards, over 180 of the best projects in the United Kingdom and internationally were judged based on excellence of architectural or engineering, which embraced the many aspects from procurement, performance against prediction, quality of design and construction, safety, innovation, sustainability, usability and benefit to the community. En route to the award win, short listed project teams had to also undergo a series of interviews in London as well as visiting judges who scrutinised and gleaned further information on the project during the construction period and after its completion.

The 9.7km long tunnel that was built using two 13.2 diameter sized slurry shield tunnel boring machines, which tunneled safely beneath Kuala Lumpur’s city centre through karstic limestone geology, fulfilled the judges criteria in having shown excellence for architectural and engineering, quality of design and construction, safety and innovation.

In winning the award SMART beat four other short listed international projects such as the Bijlmer Arena Station in Amsterdam, Kensington Oval Cricket Ground in Barbados, Shin-Marunouchi Towers in Japan, and Beijing International Airport T3 in China.