Bridge design strikes gold

Te Matau o Pohe, the bridge across the Hatea River, has won gold in New Zealand's top engineering awards.

Whangarei's striking Matau o Pohe bridge has won a prestigious gold award in New Zealand's top engineering accolades.

The $32 million bridge with the unique lifting bascule was one of three nationwide projects to win gold at the 50th annual NZ Innovate awards, organised by Acenz, the Association of Consulting and Engineering Professionals of New Zealand.

It is the 14th award or place as a finalist given to the bridge design and construction since 2013.

The bridge was recognised in the latest awards "for the engineers' tenacity throughout the design process and close collaboration with architects and builders".

It is only New Zealand's second bridge with a lifting mid-section to enable boats to pass underneath.

The judges said the 265-metre bridge exemplifies outstanding civil construction, while showing that good design can include both functionality and aesthetics.

"The bridge is helping to ease traffic congestion in the area. Community involvement was also a key driver, with more than 60 per cent of the project's value spent locally," Acenz chief executive Kieran Shaw said.

Whangarei District Council infrastructure services group manager Simon Weston and Councillor Greg Martin were in Christchurch at the annual Acenz conference, where the win was announced on Saturday night. Mr Martin was chairman of infrastructure and services committee during the bridge project.

Mr Weston said the gold award was another exciting outcome for what had been "a fantastic project to be involved in".

"It was great to work with such competent local engineers and contractors. Many of them have used their involvement as a springboard to go on to bigger things with their businesses. It's won a heap of other awards, including international ones, and rightly so. It's a beautiful and functional structure."

Mr Weston said the award really went to design engineer and consultant Duncan Peters, formerly of Peters and Chung.

The other two winners, ahead of 25 entries in Acenz's 2015 awards, were the $124 million Harley Gray Building housing operating theatre suites and clinical services at Middlemore Hospital in Auckland and Wellington's Clyde Quay Wharf project, which transformed a 100-year-old passenger wharf into an apartment complex.