Techfest

Ramboll’s digital design team and the SiteSolve platform have won further awards at both the IABSE future of Design conference and at the NCE Techfest, on the same day. Ruth Norman-Johnson collected the award for ‘Best use of Technology – Driving Efficiency through Design’ at the Techfest, while Paul Jeffries won the IABSE Young Designer’s Award for his paper on the digital toolkit. The awards represent a triumph for Ramboll’s team of computational designers and the achievements they have made in bringing together multiple strands of digital design onto the Dynamic Masterplanning platform. 

The NCE Techfest provides a forum for civil engineers looking to learn more about the innovations shaping the industry and encourages delegates to debate the industry’s biggest tech challenges, stimulating opportunities to further innovation. This innovative approach is applied to the live-judging of five special categories, providing a unique opportunity for shortlisted candidates to share their innovations and technologies with Techfest attendees as well as the judging panel. Ruth’s successful presentation highlighted the continuing development of the masterplanning toolkit, and demonstrated how this leads to better design earlier in the process. 

The IABSE Future of Design conference is for young design professionals and students to engage with leading lights in engineering on the design challenges that we face in the future. Paul Jeffries presented his paper ‘Generative Design for Whole-Site Optimisation’ to the conference floor, which focusses on some of the research around in Dynamic Masterplanning. The presentation won both the judges selection and the audience vote for the Young Designer’s Award.

Mathew Riley, Managing Director Ramboll UK, commented, “What a fantastic achievement for Ruth, Paul and the team. It is recognition that they are absolutely at the leading edge of innovation in design and engineering. Not only do our clients see the benefits of our digital approach, but we’re successfully communicating these benefits to the wider industry and that has to be a good thing.”