Mercia Branch Awards – Winners Announced
- Friday June 16, 2023
The Institute of Highway Engineers (IHE) Mercia Branch was delighted to welcome 200 guests to its awards evening, which was hosted at the Macdonald Burlington Hotel in Birmingham on Thursday 18 May 2023. The evening was kindly supported by our headline sponsor, The Severnside Group and featured an entertaining after dinner speech from the much-loved British comedian, Mark Watson.
The awards recognise and celebrate the outstanding work of teams and individuals across the transport planning and highways industry. This included a new category, Developer Project of the Year, to recognise innovative approaches taken by an organisation(s) and partners(s) to designing new developments (greenfield and brownfield) that are sustainable and reduce the impact of their development on the environment and/or transport network.
Following some pre-meal networking and a three-course meal, IHE President Martin Polland provided a fantastic speech that poignantly summarised the challenges and opportunities facing the highways and transport industry, and highlighted other issues caused by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. This was followed by Mark Watson, who provided an entertaining after dinner speech, taking us through his experiences of growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, some of his career highlights, and cracking some lighthearted jokes at the expense of some of those in the room.
The IHE Mercia Branch invited entries across eight categories. All entries were voluntarily reviewed and scored by our expert judging panel: Katharine Kelly from Arcadis (and IHE senior vice president), Jim Golby from Applied Driving Techniques, Rebecca Bollen from 4 Ways Consulting and Darren Capes, ITS policy lead at the Department for Transport (and IHE junior vice president). The branch is very grateful to each judge for volunteering their time – a huge thank you again from all of us.
Each of the award categories was kindly sponsored – category sponsors listed alongside our winners and highly commended submissions (see below). The IHE Mercia Branch would like to congratulate all of our winners and highly commended entrants, who are all very worthy of their awards.
Throughout the course of the evening, the IHE Mercia Branch was also raising money for the Birmingham Central Foodbank. Through selling raffle tickets and the generosity of everyone in the room, we were able to raise a record breaking £1,425. Thank you to everyone for your support.
Finally, the IHE Mercia Branch Committee would like to thank all of our category sponsors for their support, as well as all the organisations who submitted entries and attended. Without you, this event would not be possible.
An official photographer was also present during the evening and all photographs from the Awards Evening are located on the IHE Mercia Branch Awards 2023 page.
11th Annual IHE Mercia Branch Awards 2023-2024 timetable
- November 2023 – Online Entry
- February 2024 – Entry Deadline
- March 2024 – Finalists Announced
- April 2024 – Awards Evening