The Diamond Award 2011 ceremony will be hosted by the Concrete Sawing & Drilling Association, one of the award sponsors and a member association of IACDS, and will take place at 5:00 PM on Tuesday, January 18 in room N263 of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Members of the press are encouraged to attend.
The gold award in this competition is awarded to Tondin srl of Italy for the company's outstanding work in the tunnels of a rail system that connects Bologna to Florence. The project involved large quantities of concrete cutting over a two-year period to increase safety in the tunnel system. The cutting contractor used a great deal of innovation to perform some of the work, using mechanical arms mounted to the front of an excavation vehicle with wall saw and chain saw attachments to cut the tunnel walls.
Taking the silver award is Thayr s.l. of Spain, for its work on a wharf expansion project at the Port of Huelva in the Southeast region of the country. The cutting work was performed underwater using diamond wire sawing techniques to cut and remove 26 reinforced concrete pilings that were 4 feet in diameter.
The bronze award has been won by D-Drill Master Drillers Ltd. of the United Kingdom for the contractor's care and precision in removing a 100-year-old tile mural with a wire saw during a hospital renovation. A custom-made 110-volt wire saw was engineered to complete the job that had strict noise and vibration tolerances.
The Diamond Award competition allows concrete sawing and drilling industry professionals to present their most complex and innovative projects. Entries were judged on the degree of difficulty, planning, complexity, innovation and the quality of the work produced to ensure project success. Following a detailed review of each entry, the judging panel representing members of various country-wide sawing and drilling association chose the winning projects.
