ITA Bestows 2024 Awards

Winners of the seven categories of the 10th Anniversary series of the ITA Tunnelling Awards were announced and the Brunel Trophies presented at the Awards gala celebrations in Genoa, Italy.

These outstanding achievements from across the world demonstrate how each of the projects, innovations and young tunnelers of the 2024 Awards series are changing how underground engineering is shaping the future development and sustainability of cities and global public infrastructure.

Since 2015, this international competition seeks and rewards remarkable achievements in tunneling and the underground industry. Organized by the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association, the event both showcases the most ambitious underground projects all over the world as well as the latest innovations, techniques, and methods in tunnelling.

The 2024 winners were:

MAJOR PROJECT OF THE YEAR – €500 MILLION+

• Gold: Thames Tideway – London’s Super Sewer, UK
• Silver: Grand Central Madison (formerly East Side Access), New York, USA
• Bronze: Thomson-East Coast Line Contracts T222 to T310, Singapore
• 4th: Single-bore Double-deck Municipal Expressway Tunnel with Super-large Diameter, China

PROJECT OF THE YEAR – €50-€500 MILLION

• Gold Brenner Base Tunnel – Lot H52 Hochstegen, Austria
• Silver Isarco River Underpass – Lot H71, Brenner Base Tunnel, Italy
• Bronze Lyon-Turin Saint-Martin-la-Porte Exploratory Tunnel, France
• 4th Musaimeer Pump Station and Outfall Project, Qatar

RENOVATION PROJECT OF THE YEAR

• Gold: Manfreida Road Tunnel Renovation Project, Italy
• Silver: Refurbishment of the Heinenoord Immersed Tube Road Tunnel, Netherlands
• Bronze: Genoa Railway Junction Capacity Upgrade, Italy

PRODUCT/EQUIPMENT INNOVATION OF THE YEAR

• Gold: Ultra-Small Turning Radius Hard Rock TBM, China
• Silver: SOGUN: Geometric Control System for Shotcreting and Other Tunneling Works, Spain
• Bronze: Advanced Hybrid Wireless Sensor Network System for Safety Risk Sensing in Tunnel and Underground Engineering, China
• 4th: Type 0-90° Continuous Conveyor Equipment, China

TECHNICAL INNOVATION OF THE YEAR

• Gold: Disc Cutter Wear Sensor Package and TBM Monitoring System, South Korea
• Silver: MIRET-Tunnel AI, Italy
• Bronze: Advanced Tunneling Assistance System, Italy

BEYOND ENGINEERING

• Gold: Modern Underground Cemetery – Where Creativity, Sustainability and Efficiency Meet Tradition, Israel
• Silver: City Rail Link Goes Beyond in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, New Zealand
• Bronze: Eco-friendly Metro Construction for Challenging Coastal Geological Environments, China
• 4th: Risk Control for Safe Shield Tunneling Through Complex Strata of the Pearl River System, China

YOUNG TUNNELER OF THE YEAR

• Gold: Luigi D’Angelo, Italy, 34
• Silver: Hanan Samadi, Iran, 28
• Bronze: Adriano Martoccia, Italy, 33

More information on the 2024 award winners can be found here.

Next year, the 2025 series of ITA Tunnelling Awards will be held in Belgrade, Serbia, in conjunction with the 2025 SETC Southeastern Europe Tunnelling Conference on October 1-3, 2025.