Sustainable drainage design competition winners announced
08 July 2010
Cambridge City Council press release
The winners of the Cambridge Sustainable Drainage Design Competition have been announced as Royal Haskoning (Peterborough Office) in first place, second place goes to Giles Hopgood and third place goes to Mott MacDonald (Cambridge Office).
Sustainable Drainage (SuDS) seeks to replicate natural drainage systems to drain away surface water run-off allowing it to be released slowly back into the environment, such as into watercourses. The national competition was the first in the UK and was organised by Cambridge City Council, CIRIA and Cambridgeshire Horizons, to show that good upfront design and the integration of SuDS within a development could lead to high quality and successful schemes.
The winning entries can be found on Cambridge City Council's website, together with the Council's SuDS Design and Adoption Guide.
Cllr Clare Blair, Executive Councillor for Climate Change and Growth said: The standard of entry for the competition was very high and showed that use of SuDS in new developments could provide attractive and useable green spaces rich in biodiversity and which also perform a valuable function.
Paul Shaffer from CIRIA said that:"the winning entries demonstrated the benefits of integrating sustainable drainage into developments and the contribution it makes to the delivery of green infrastructure and improving urban design".
Richard Stevens from Royal Haskoning said: "Sustainability is central to Royal Haskoning's vision so we are delighted to have been awarded first place in the Cambridge Sustainable Drainage Competition. We have a great deal of knowledge and expertise within the company of this type of project and we used a multidisciplinary team to create the competition entry.
"We wanted to demonstrate that innovative and sustainable civil engineering design does not have to be just an aspiration - our design shows schemes that are practical and fully-integrated with the development as well as sustainable are achievable and can be very much a reality."