The winner of the 2020 David Sugden Award is Daniel O’Kelly for his paper Implications of the Evolving Vehicle Fleet on Ventilation Energy Consumption in NSW Road Tunnels. The judging panel noted the winning paper “an important paper that quantifies the current and future impact of policy in NSW and Australia”.
The 2020 edition of the award saw a number of extremely high-quality entries on topics including measuring geotechnical uncertainty, application of international guidelines for design in Australia, ground-freezing, materials testing and product development. The ATS will be arranging webinars later in the year to showcase the winner as well as a number of the exceptional entries.
Thanks to all of the participants for their submissions, as well as to the judging committee for their efforts. Daniel is scheduled to receive his award as part of the ATS2020 festivities currently scheduled to be held in Melbourne later this year. As part of his award, Daniel will receive registration for WTC2021 to be held in Copenhagen as well as a contribution towards flights and accommodation.
The David Sugden Award
In 2004 the Australian Tunnelling Society started the David Sugden Award to encourage young engineers to develop the art of technical writing. A number of past winners have gone on to hold prominent roles within the tunnelling industry.
David Sugden was the driving force behind the successful design of mechanical full-face rock excavation machinery over a number of years, resulting in the forging of countless tunnels across the world. David continually showed a commitment to innovation and design throughout his career, often custom-making machinery to solve problems that arose and for which no existing devices were available or appropriate. As a result of this attitude, David is listed as the inventor on over 40 patents.
Beginning his career in 1938 as a Cadet Engineer with the Public Works Dept of WA he continued with a number of appointments at the Hydro-Electric Commission of Tasmania. Whilst at the HEC, David was instrumental in introducing the Commission and subsequently Australia to Machine tunnelling. In 1967, David began a long and internationally recognised consultancy career that continues to this day. Notably, he had significant involvement with both the Robbins Company of Seattle, USA and Terratec Asia Pacific.
