The Major Project Award for Sustainability recognises a team that has played a critical role in a major engineering project that has had a substantial impact on society and sustainability.
2023 winner
Buro Happold, Battersea Power Station
Buro Happold, the global practice of engineers, designers and advisers has won the 2023 award for providing multi-disciplinary engineering solutions for the restoration of the Grade II* listed Battersea Power Station, which opened its doors to the public for the first time in October 2022 and is the centrepiece of a new riverside neighbourhood and business quarter for London, serviced by a Zone 1 extension to the London Underground Northern Line.
Sustainability was at the forefront of the major engineering-led project to bring new life to the iconic industrial building built between 1929 and 1955. Buro Happold’s involvement in Battersea Power Station’s regeneration began in 1999. The team worked collaboratively with client Battersea Power Station Development Company (BPSDC) and architect Wilkinson Eyre between 2012 and 2023.
'The opening of Battersea Power Station and Electric Boulevard', Charlie Round Turner
The team’s contribution includes the brick replacement programme, reconstruction of the four iconic chimneys plus critical roles in schemes across the former 42-acre brownfield site.
The Buro Happold team includes:
- Justin Phillips, Project Principal
- Franck Robert, Project Director
- Wolf Mangelsdorf FREng, Project Design Lead
- Sam Youdan, Project Lead - Restored Building Elements and Sub-structure
- Michael Brooks, Project Lead - New Build Superstructure
- Rachel Monteith, Project Lead - Ground Engineer
'Battersea Power Station' - Charlie Round Turner
'Battersea Power Station Turbine Hall A' - John Sturrock
'Spring Festival at Battersea Power Station' - Charlie Round-Turner
Recent winners
2022: North Sea Link Interconnector Project
The engineers behind the North Sea Link Interconnector Project (NSL) received the award in 2022 2022 for delivering the longest subsea interconnector in the world. Delivered in partnership between the National Grid and Statnett, the high-voltage direct current subsea interconnector allows renewable energy to flow between Norway and the UK for the first time. NSL supports efficient energy trade and allows both countries to benefit from increased flexibility and energy security.
NSL enables the primary renewable energy sources of each country to offset the intermittency in power supply of the other. Norwegian power generation is primarily sourced from hydropower plants connected to large reservoirs, with the water levels in these reservoirs subject to weather conditions, leading to variable energy supply in different seasons and years.
2021: Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak Upgrade
MAST-U's compact fusion design, the ‘spherical tokamak’, has the potential to provide a cheaper, more efficient means of providing fusion energy than is possible in larger devices. However, a big engineering challenge in getting the more compact machines on the electricity grid is how to sustain a fuel ten times hotter than the Sun in a smaller volume without damaging the machine itself. The team at Culham led the design and production of a complex and technically challenging exhaust system, called the Super-X divertor, on MAST Upgrade. This reduces the heat of the exhaust material by a factor of ten and channels it out of the machine at temperatures low enough for the machine’s components to withstand, improving the operational life and economic viability of a future fusion power plant.
