On the first official day of its Autodesk University conference, Autodesk announced the winners of the 2018 AEC Excellence Awards, given to standout projects that use Autodesk’s BIM software alongside emerging technologies like generative design.
The AEC Excellent Awards include nine awards in total, with small, medium and large projects recognized in each category of Infrastructure Design, Building Design, and Construction. This year, Autodesk added an Innovator of the Year Award which, in the words of the company, recognizes “a person who is transforming the design and construction industry through the use of technology, collaboration, evangelism, and innovation.” The winners were chosen by an independent panel of industry experts from among 256 finalist project entries and 60 Innovator of the Year nominations.
In the category of infrastructure design, the small project award went to public organization Empresa Desarrollo Urbano de Medellín (EDU) for its mapping of the precarious mountainside homes of Medellín, allowing the government to help plan safer cities. China Railway Siyuan Survey and Design Group won the medium project award for its airborne LiDAR mapping of a railway route to reduce the need for tunnels and bridges. Finally, the Chongqing Municipal Research Institute of Design won the large project award for its inter-city expressway, the process for which included digital driving simulation to improve driver experience.
In the building design category, many of this year’s designs focussed on sustainability. Basler and Hoffman AG’s office building extension, the winner of the small building design category, was completed with an entirely paperless design flow. The medium project award was given to KierenTimberlakeand Burohappold Engineering for its work on the expansion of the Brown University Engineering Research Centre. An alliance between the Nordic Office of Architecture and COWI was awarded the large project award for Norway’s Stavanger University Hospital, whose size and need for standardization required an unusual modular approach to design.
In the construction category, Miller Electric Company took the small project award for the Baptist Health MD Anderson Cancer Centre, built in Jacksonville, Fla. Skanska USA received the medium project award for another hospital, this one Virginia’s UVA Hospital Expansion. Among Skanska’s achievements on the project, the team maneuvered two cranes within 30 feet of a trauma helipad. Mace Group was given the large project award for Facebook’s Clonee Data Centre in Ireland, one of the world’s most sustainable data centres.
The first-ever Innovator of the Year award went to Zhibing Mao, Chief Engineer for China State Construction Engineering Corporation Limited for his BIM evangelism and heavy involvement.
“We are thrilled with the breadth and depth of these finalists and seeing how emerging technology for collaboration, prefabrication, and design automation is transforming the way AEC works,” said Nicolas Mangon, Autodesk’s Vice President of AEC Strategy and Marketing, in his statement on the awards. “These finalists represent how the AEC industry is not only embracing the future of making but are making it happen now.”