New Zealand has proven its expertise in civil engineering to the world, winning the 2018 Institution of Civil Engineers People's Choice Award for the Kaikōura earthquake recovery project. 

The project, which was a partnership between KiwiRail and the New Zealand Transport Agency, beat nine other shortlisted projects including city railways in India, innovative British windfarms and a huge river bridge in Scotland. 

On 14 November 2016, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit in Kaikōura, New Zealand. The epic jolt resulted from the country’s strongest ground acceleration on record. Nearly 1 million cubic metres of rock and debris fell onto roads and the rail line – enough to fill 400 Olympic swimming pools.

There were 194km of road left damaged, with 85 landslides and 1500 damaged sites across State Highway 1 (SH1) alone. On the Main North Line railway, 950 rail sites and 20 tunnels were damaged. Of the 150km of rail damaged, large sections of the line were pushed right into the sea. The earthquake left Kaikōura and neighbouring communities completely cut off, and heavily impact New Zealand-wide, road and rail movements. 

The partnership worked quickly to repair the unprecedented level of damage and reconnect railways, roads and harbour.  On 15 December 2017, one year, one month and one day on from an earthquake, SH1 was reopened north of Kaikōura. By that time, 1700 people had worked more than two million hours to move mountains and reconnect the communities isolated by the earthquake

Winning a global engineering award is fantastic recognition of the country's expertise in civil engineering and earthquake recovery, says KiwiRail’s Acting Chief Executive Todd Moyle. 

“The rebuild of the Main North Line railway and State Highway One following the Kaikoura earthquake has achieved global recognition by beating nine other major engineering projects to win a prestigious international award – the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) People’s Choice Award," he says. 

“We’re known as masters of number eight wire thinking, but we’ve taken that attitude and turned it into engineering excellence recognised around the world.

 

“KiwiRail, our partners NZTA and the NCTIR alliance brought together the best civil engineering and construction capability in New Zealand to deliver what was a massively complex project. This award is for everyone who worked on that project, and the communities who supported us over the two years it took." 

The ICE award is determined by popular vote. 

“We were the only Southern Hemisphere finalist alongside nine high profile projects from much larger countries such as the United Kingdom and India," Moyle says. 

ICE is a London-based, professional membership body for civil engineers worldwide who work across government and industry. This year is the first year the award has been open to entrants from outside the UK, to mark ICE’s bicentenary.

Other finalists included the 2.7 km long Forth river replacement bridge in Scotland; an innovative offshore wind farm generating electricity for 34,000 household near Newcastle, England; a new metro rail system in Hyderabad India; and a Hong Kong Harbour area waste water treatment scheme.