2016 TAC Awards Recipients Announced

By TBM News October 13, 2016

The Tunnelling Association of Canada (TAC) announced that Dr. Ray Benson of Klohn Crippen Berger is the recipient of the association’s Canadian Lifetime Achievement Award as part of the 2016 TAC Awards. In addition to his lifetime of exemplary contributions to tunneling engineering in Canada, Dr. Benson served as TAC President from 1984 to 1989.

Benson has a long history with the Klohn Crippen Berger. He started with Klohn Leonoff in 1976, served as President from 1987-1993 and was with the firm until retirement in 2006. His career included planning, administration and operations management at the executive level with a strong emphasis on engineering operations.

Benson has more than 40 years of experience spanning a wide variety of civil and mining projects in Canada, the United States and overseas. His experience in civil engineering and applied soil and rock mechanics is related to hydroelectric and general civil projects. Benson was involved with the design and construction of numerous tunnels, dams, hydroelectric projects and mine developments.

Other 2016 TAC Achievement Award winners include:

Innovation Project of the Year – Port Mann Water Supply Tunnel (Metro Vancouver, MicMillen Jacobs Associates, Ausenco, Procon, Hatch, Golder Associates, McNally Construction, Aecon, Moretrench, Fraser River Pile and Dredge, and AECOM).
Infrastructure Project of the Year – La Romaine 3 Headrace Tunnel Excavation & Related Works (Hydro Quebec, Neilson-EBC S.E.N.C., and AECOM).
Canadian Lifetime Service Award – Rick Staples, Parsons Canad (TAC president from 2009-2013).
Photo of the Year – Scott Marshall and Tony Dell for the John Hart Generating Station Replacement Project

The 2016 awards were presented on Monday, Oct. 17 in Ottawa, Ontario, as part of the TAC 2016 Annual Conference in Ottawa, which ran from Oct. 16-18.

Additionally, it was announced the Sarah Cain has received the 2016 Dan Eisenstein Memorial Scholarship. A 2015 BScE graduate of Queen’s University in geological engineering, Cain is currently completing the first year of her master’s program working with Dr. Mark Diederichs at Queen’s University. Cain’s graduate research includes examining the geometric effects on and stress sensitivity with respect to wall damage impacting deep tunnels for nuclear waste storage. The university published a profile of Cain here.