Dewberry, a privately held professional services firm, has announced that the Rebuild By Design Hudson River project has won the Grand Honor award for non-transportation projects at the American Council of Engineering Companies of New Jersey’s (ACECNJ) annual Engineering Excellence Awards competition. The project will also receive a National Recognition Award at the ACEC Engineering Excellence Awards in April.
The ACECNJ Engineering Excellence Awards (EEA) recognize engineering achievements that demonstrate a high degree of skill and ingenuity among firms throughout New Jersey. Projects that are winners at state-level EEA competitions are eligible for ACEC’s national EEA competition, with 36 national awards available each year for the nation’s most outstanding engineering projects.
For the Rebuild by Design Hudson River project, Dewberry partnered as prime consultant with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to prepare a feasibility study and an environmental impact statement. The project included a comprehensive urban water strategy to reduce coastal storm surge and rainfall flood risk in the City of Hoboken and parts of Weehawken and Jersey City.
The project emerged from concepts developed during the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Rebuild By Design Competition, in response to the impact of Superstorm Sandy on coastal communities. The firm developed three build alternatives, and selected a preferred alternative considering flood risk reduction, constructability, viability, built and natural environmental impacts, coastal flood and rainfall modeling, utility impacts, subsurface soil conditions, right-of-way impacts, traffic/pedestrian flow, construction cost, and benefit-cost analysis in order to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act. The process included more than 150 small group meetings, workshops, and stakeholder engagement and public meetings over 18 months. In October 2017, HUD released $230 million in project funding to move the project into the next phase of design and construction.
