The American Council of Engineering Companies of Massachusetts (ACEC/MA) has named Arup as a winner of their 2020 Silver Engineering Excellence Award for their work on Northeastern University’s new pedestrian bridge in Boston, MA.
The 2020 Engineering Excellence Awards were recently announced and will be celebrated at the 2021 ACEC/MA Engineering Excellence and Awards Gala. The awards celebrate innovation, ingenuity, and excellence in engineering achievement.
Arup provided structural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection, and geotechnical engineering, and façade and lighting consulting to Payette for the design of this new pedestrian bridge. Spanning five MBTA/Amtrak rail lines, Northeastern University’s new pedestrian bridge provides a link between two halves of campus, the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex, and the neighborhoods of Fenway and Roxbury. The bridge’s curved, asymmetric form required careful engineering design and is realized through two parapet barriers that flank the structure. These barriers lean 10 degrees outwards and use overlapping panels of solid specialty steel plate, which mask railroad infrastructure and direct views outwards and upwards. The specialty steel’s corrosion resistance means the bridge will not require repeated painting, resulting in lower operational expenses and few disruptions in rail service.
“The Engineering Excellence Awards program recognizes engineering firms for projects that demonstrate a high degree of achievement, value and ingenuity,” said Jenn Howe, President of the American Council of Engineering Companies of Massachusetts and Principal and Vice President at SMMA, Symmes Maini & McKee Associates. “Entrants are rated by an independent panel of judges from the architectural community, the construction industry, academia, the media, and the public sector on the basis of uniqueness and originality; future value to the profession and perception by the public; social, economic and sustainable development considerations; complexity; and successful fulfillment of the client/owner’s need, including schedule and budget. We congratulate them and thank them for their contributions to improving the quality of our everyday lives.”
About ACEC/MA
The American Council of Engineering Companies of Massachusetts (ACEC/MA) is the business association of the Massachusetts and Rhode Island engineering industry, representing over 120 independent engineering companies engaged in the development of transportation, environmental, industrial, and other infrastructure. Founded in 1960 and headquartered in Boston, MA, ACEC/MA is a member organization of the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) based in Washington, DC. ACEC is a national federation of 51 state and regional organizations. For more information on ACEC/MA, visit their website at www.acecma.org. ACEC/MA is undertaking an awareness campaign to educate the public on the many contributions engineers make (or the engineering innovations) in everyday life through their hash tag #EngineeringGoFigure. To Follow us on Twitter: @ACECMA. ACEC/MA is also announcing its 2021 Engineering Excellence Awards Competition. Entry Forms are now available. For more information about the 2021 competition, go to: https://www.acecma.org/about/
Arup is the creative force at the heart of many of the world's most prominent projects in the built environment and across industry. Working in more than 140 countries, the firm's designers, engineers, architects, planners, consultants and technical specialists work with our clients on innovative projects of the highest quality and impact.
