New Zealand Engineering Excellence Awards

Hamilton Water Treatment Station announced engineering excellence award finalist

15 October 2007

The Hamilton Water Treatment Station was announced a category finalist in the 2007 New Zealand Engineering Excellence (NZEE) Awards today.

The third New Zealand Engineering Excellence Awards are the premier awards for New Zealand engineering professionals. The awards are presented in two major areas: Individual Awards, that recognise leadership, entrepreneurship, and our young engineers; and Category Awards, that recognise achievement in the various industry areas, together with a Supreme Award for the best of the Category winners.

The Hamilton Water Treatment Station was completed by engineering consultancy GHD.

A glimpse of the Hamilton Water Treatment Station (WTS) provides little indication of the powerful, state-of-the-art features that lie within its walls. Step inside, and the futuristic vision of Australasia’s largest drinking water ultraviolet (UV) disinfection facility becomes evident. Setting a new benchmark in water treatment plants in the region, the Hamilton WTS is New Zealand’s largest drinking water UV and Granular Activated Carbon (GAC) plant, with an upgraded capacity of 106 megalitres per day (ml/d).

The Hamilton WTS was originally a conventional clarification and filtration plant, with a nominal capacity of 80 ml/d drawing water from New Zealand’s largest river, the Waikato River. In recent years, increasing levels of tastes and odours have occurred in the river, as algae levels increased. Hamilton City Council (HCC) recognised the facility required upgrading in order to retain its ‘A’ grading for the supply of safe and wholesome water over the next 20 years. In light of this, HCC commissioned GHD to produce a ’20-year strategy plan’ for the WTS.

GHD developed a plan that evaluated a range of options for capacity and treatment performance. The inclusion of GAC filters and UV disinfection enabled parts of the existing plant to run faster and achieve an upgraded capacity of 106 ml/d. GHD was appointed to complete pre-design, detailed design, construction administration and commissioning for the upgrade.

David Elms, Convenor of the Category Awards judging panel said that the calibre of finalist projects highlighted the contribution that professional engineers make to New Zealand on a social, economic and environmental scale.

“These projects made the finalist cut because they each are outstanding examples of engineering innovation”, says Mr Elms. “This year’s finalists impressed the judges by demonstrating how their projects contributed to the national economy and the reputation of New Zealand engineering and impacted on quality of life in their communities”.

Winners of both individual and category awards will be announced at a black-tie gala dinner at TE PAPA, Wellington on Wednesday, 21 November 2007.

The New Zealand Engineering Excellence Awards are hosted by a consortium of five partners and 10 contributing organisations. The partners are: Centre for Advanced Engineering (CAE); Association of Local Government Engineering New Zealand Incorporated (INGENIUM); Electricity Engineers Association of New Zealand (EEA); Association of Consulting Engineers New Zealand (ACENZ); and the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand Inc (IPENZ).

Media enquiries contact:

Verona-Meiana Putaranui, NZEE Awards Media Co-ordinator

Email: media@ipenz.org.nz

Phone: +64 4 473 2028 or Cell: +64 21 479885